A Sailor's Story Quotes

“They called her names. They spoke derisively of her and made jokes about her. They dubbed her a ‘white Elephant’ and they referred to her as a ‘sick widow.’ When in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict it was reported that she was in dry dock, they sarcastically asked ‘When was she not?’ To Admiral N. Krishnan, FOC-in-C, Eastern Naval Command is, however, attributed the grand slam retort. To scoffers he quipped, ‘After all, what is wrong with a lady getting indisposed once a month and dry docking every nine months? Every ship needs to be serviced once in nine months, even as every motor car has to be serviced every 1,000 miles of run. This is a normal practice and it just happened, a pure accident, that when the Indo-Pakistani conflict broke out in 1965, VIKRANT was on its nine-monthly visit to the hospital!”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography

“In this game, the forfeit of a mistake is one’s life.”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography

“It is a monument and a tribute to the will of man that by sheer hard work, determination, and fortitude, this battleground of two thousand years (and still remaining so) the Israelis have achieved so much in such a short time (Israel declared her Independence in 1948 and my visit was in 1953).”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography

“If the pilot is garrulous or grumpy then the situation is really jumpy.”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography

“Gandhiji understood everyone, the people understood him, and yet he was beyond understanding.”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography

“Friendly aircraft dropping bombs!”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography

“At one point of time, I thought I saw one aircraft hit - she was leaving a trail of smoke. In great excitement, I waved my tin helmet and shouted, “We have got her, we have got her.” Somebody walloped me from the back and shouted, “Duck, you stupid ass, he is machine-gunning us.”
― Arjun Krishnan, A Sailor's Story: An Autobiography