The Walk Across The Oceans

Starting today, I add a new column to my blog. The  world is full of people who have faced the challenges of life and emerged winners. Life has been harsh to them, yet they have found reasons to carry on. They could have given up but they didn't, because they believed that the fact that they were still breathing, was a bigger gift. These are the stories which we can turn to, at times when we are at our lowest. These are the heroes  who can be your idols. They will share their stories as to how they overcame their losses and are still content and happy. They will tell you how they faced the harsh world. To begin with I share the story of Major A K Singh, which in fact is the fourth in the series. The first three will follow in the coming weeks.

Major A K Singh

Life never ends with an accident or an emotional setback or for that reason, any tragedy whatsoever. It's up to us to shift gears and go full throttle in whichever direction we want. To bring across the truth of this belief, to millions of readers out there, I wanted to interview all the tough fighters. The decision been taken, the next step was the daunting task of finding such people. I set out for my research. One day while browsing through the shelves of a bookstore, an interesting cover caught my eye. There was the picture of the ocean, and a tall, dark handsome guy sailing across. The cover looked interesting. And as I held the book, my eyes noticed, that one leg of the hero was wooden. That indeed is my subject, I thought. With the name securely written on my note pad, what I didn't envision was that in spite of the shrunken world, I will still face difficulty getting in touch with him.

After a smooth ride of penning three articles, I stumbled. The next two names in the list just eluded me. One was Major AK Singh and the other...well...I will divulge his name only if ever I am able to bring his story to you all.

Coming back to Major A K Singh, I did finally get to chat up with him. He very humbly differed with my view of finding him handsome. "I just felt I was that odd awkward boy, who would wear special shoes with heavy inner soles to improve my knock knees and flat feet. In fact I was nicknamed German Shoes," says the good humoured Major.

Setting aside the matter of dissension, I would like to warn about the adrenaline pumping read you are about to dive into. Till date I had only seen schools of flying fish jumping out of water in the technologically created scenes of 'Life of Pi'. Today I can boast that I have heard about them from someone who has personally been through the ineffable experience. There you go, I can sense the thrill building up already. So let's embark upon the journey with the man who with immense passion pursued his dream to sail around the world. In the process he went on to become the 'First Handicap Person to Circumnavigate the Globe'.

The Foundation

"I remember as a four year old I had watched films like 'Ganga Jamuna', and 'Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai'. I was so impressed. The dacoits were doing such a good job. So when anybody asked me what I wanted to be, I would proudly say a dacoit", he shares laughing out loud. This child with adventurous streaks in him went on to be a soldier to the nation.

Born the youngest into a family of two brothers and two sisters, Major Ashok Kumar Singh's father pooled in all his resources to provide the best to him. He was sent off to The Rashtriya Indian Military Academy (RIMC), where he excelled in his studies. The foundation to be physically strong and courageous was laid to prepare him to join the National Defence Academy (NDA). "It was at NDA, that I was introduced to sailing. We started off with small cadet class dinghies", he recollects. "It was fun and I enjoyed it. Soon we were sailing in Mumbai. We used to sail off the Colaba Coast in those days."

He went on to represent NDA at the first Cadet Class National Regatta held at Pune's Royal Connaught Boat Club. He also represented India at the Youth Olympics at Kiel, West Germany in 1972.

Streak of Adventure

By the time he moved to IMA, he had already picked up the Sports Blues for riding, polo, swimming, physical training and athletics. His proficiency in sailing and yachting fetched him the Sports Blazer at NDA. The list is unending. At the IMA he was awarded the Sword of Honour for being the best overall and the President's Gold Medal for being the best in Academic Subjects. Armed with excellence he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Bengal Sappers. "That's one group of Indian Army Corps of Engineers. The other two groups of Combat Engineers are the Bombay Sappers and the Madras Sappers," he makes things easier for me to understand.

Sailing and Windsurfing had become a part of life for him now. In 1977, he was part of a Yachting Cruise from Bombay, now Mumbai to Bandar Abbas, now Iran. At times when he wasn't sailing? "I would drive around in my Royal Enfield, which I modified in those days to run on diesel, with my Golden Spaniel dog as company," he fills in enthusiastically.

Leap of Destiny

While posted at the College of Engineering Pune, Major Singh took fancy to hang-gliding in the Baner Ridge Area around Pune. "As I had been transferred, I felt there was this one high-performance kite I had not flown", he recalls of the fateful day. "They say nothing should be done in a rush and that was one time in my life I rushed." The breeze was at about 12 knot, the day was normal and he took off as usual from the cliff. "I knew I had to take a left turn to make the kite go right. But I don't know how it turned towards the ridge again and I hit the cliff and was stuck on a branch."

The impact was so strong that his helmet fell down. A woman standing below mistook it to be his head falling apart and fainted. The rest for him were faint memories in and out of a delirium. He could sense the bumpy ride in the army ammo truck. "I managed to say 'it just happened, I just crashed'. I could make out it was night. And then I heard the doctor saying, just tear away the pants."

An emergency operation later, Major Singh had a steel rod inserted through his left femur. Both his arms and legs were immobile, because of the various fractures. "The jaw was all wired up and my mouth had dry blood and saliva caked upon it." But it is fine. I shall be alright thought Major Singh lying in the ICU. 

Sheer Negligence

Unfortunately, all wasn't right. "I still remember that the first report prepared by a young recruit doctor had the note 'no blood flow to toes'. There was no flow to the dorsal artery of the foot and my toes turned bluish black." he remembers. Strangely it went unnoticed by the experienced doctors and out of sheer luck his brother-in-law who is a neurologist intervened. In a rushed up emergency operation he was amputated on his left leg above the knee.

"Later I was told it was the case of Gas Gangrene," he sheds light on the seriousness of the issue. Gas Gangerene is supposedly the deadliest form of Gangerene. I call the accident a leap of destiny, because if the incidents following up the accident hadn't taken place, the country wouldn't have got the first physically handicapped person to sail around the world. As rightly put by Major Singh himself, "Poor are the people who haven't faced hardships because they teach us a lot. We need to enjoy our life. It's our duty towards us. Enjoyment in the context that you think, you understand and you see the richness in life. You learn from what is taken away from you."

Replanning and Relearning

The process of learning to be normal had already begun since the day he lost his leg. Using a stick was out of question for this daredevil. He practised sleeping with the artificial limb on, to see how long could he take it. "The process is of learning on your own. People love throwing challenges at you. You have done this you haven't done that. How can one, who is not in the situation, know how to tackle it. Even the doctors don't know best since they are not amputees," he nails it by saying that.

In the meantime, the planning of the voyage on Trishna which had actually taken root in 1979, was given a green signal around June 1984. By then Major Singh was married and in March 1983, he had even met with the crash. 

Recounting about how he found the perfect boat he says, "I headed to England to select the boat. With limited finances, I looked over 200 to 300 of them." With lot of help from British sailors, a 14 year old third hand boat called Guinevere of Sussex later renamed to Trishna was picked up. The reason? "Well it had been sparingly used and was in a very good condition. It was the class of boat that could take the seas anywhere in the world," he clarifies. 

Even as he was getting the boat prepped up for the voyage, he was clueless as to how would he steer with one leg. "I didn't remove my leg at all for several days when we started, but then things fell into place. I designed my pants by taking my trousers off from my knee, so that the limb could be removed easily. This way I could sleep and also be up on the deck fast and work."

Major A K Singh on Trishna

The Survival 

With the ocean spread out challenges must have been abundant. "The beginning was bad because we were still settling down," he puts in. His artificial limb broke four times during the voyage. "I had so much faith in it. Unfortunately it was not made of stainless steel but of mild steel, which can not take salt water and so it corroded and broke." he complains. Every time it broke, because of the financial constraints he never saw the urgency of buying a new one because he kept on thinking that he can't afford an imported limb. Of course when the crew came to know of his suffering, they got him a new one.

Storms on the other hands can be very horrendous on small boats. He goes on to say, "you have water all over, your face, body, tongue and your eyes are red. One can't even drop off everything and turn away." So when they were hit by a storm in Tasman Sea, it was hell. When the wind pattern was supposed to be blowing West to East, they were travelling East to West. "We were suggested by the New Zealand Navy not to sail. But we all felt it was not fair to have it out in the press and then let them say that the Indian Army is not sailing because of the storm." So much for the pride of the country and he maintains that not his hang gliding crash, but the Tasman Sea was the most difficult moment of his life. "You start losing body temperature, there's a sweet deep warm feeling inside. You start hallucinating. Everything becomes dreamy. In the sweetness of the feeling you feel relaxed, want to give in, lie down and go to sleep. That is the most dangerous thing, because then hypothermia takes over," he point out. The mixture of hypothermia and his broken limb put him through a crushing feeling. But then as he specifies that when you are out there, every situation needs to be tackled to get out of it. And so they survived to share their stories with the world.

The Ethereal Experiences

Excited like a teenager I want to know if they came across any pirates. He laughs whole-heartedly and says," Pirates too know who to go after. If they find six scruffy Indian army guys, they will be like, what the hell do they have that we want to go after!"

 On a serious note, they were adequately rewarded by safe passage and the sea life too made its presence felt time and again. He has seen the whales, the sharks and also the flying fish. He vividly describes the day when flying fish were darting out of the water by hundreds. "Obviously something was wrong, either there were predators around or something to do with the sun or the moon phase or they might simply be mating because we never came across that phenomenon ever again." While occasionally they had flying fish falling on the deck and it would make good food for the crew. But that day they had to cover their eyes lest their hard jaw would have punctured them. "They left black marks on our face."  He also got to see huge Ray fish, coming clean out of the water and falling back flat. 

"Whales are curious creatures, they come close to you. It's surprising to see tons and tons of a whale body jump out clean five to ten feet above the water. It was fun watching them investigating  us, but then scary too because they were more powerful," he points out. They had come across a yacht, where the whale had surfaced below the sailor. He flopped over the back of the whale into the water. Fortunately the boat was still upright. Having lost the rudder, he somehow managed to figure out some kind of system and find his way back safe to the islands. 

It must have been scary when while on Albatross, they were sailing on shark infested waters. With a freeboard of eight inches, he got a chance to picture the shark going around the boat. "I remember telling myself not to keep my hand dangling in the water. It will be funny to be minus a leg and a hand," he shares light heartedly. And then on tropical waters on a pitch dark night, they would see a huge shimmer in the water, phosphorescent green because of planktons. "It is so ethereal, you can keep looking at it," he says of the experience.

Major A K Singh(2nd Row, first from left) with the crew of Trishna

The Present

Devoting time to his aged parents and making up for the time spent away from his wife and daughters, Major Singh today lives an active life in Lucknow. He tries to pay back to the society by looking after the girl child, running a college for girls that his father started in the village. He still pursues things he is passionate about, like travelling and indulging in adventure sports like scuba diving, skiing. A couple of years ago he managed to tick Bungee Jumping off his bucket list. Now he is waiting for the opportunity to go sky-diving. Never say never to an adventure seems to be the mantra of this spirited fellow. His enthusiasm rubs on to you so much that after the interview I too sneaked in a couple of more adventures into my bucket list, which I otherwise had started to believe that at this age I should let go off. Wishes I realized should never be ticked off. His golden words got etched in my memory when he said,"it was a simple wish to sail around the world, not meant to set record A or record B. The Ocean does not recognise records, the mountains and the jungles don't. You can enjoy them. Get from them what you never get anywhere else."

Major A K Singh with his wife Asha

Deep Insights

Life is : Beautiful! You need to see it correctly. It's a journey not chosen by us but it's our privilege to live it.

Body is :  A carrier for who you are, all you want to do for yourself.

Duty is : Life

Happiness is : Being able to do what you really want to do.

Adventure is : Pushing at your own personal thresholds all the time.

Dreams are : Anything that doesn't go away while you are awake or sleeping. It nags you, bothers you, you can't wish it away.