Waking up from hibernation

I thought I had retired. But apparently some think I haven’t. So, when asked by a friend if I would do an accident investigation, the only question i asked was ‘where?’ to which he replied,

“Valencia, Spain.”

That sealed the deal. Ever since I sailed on a ship with a Chilean crew some decades ago, I have had this obsession with mastering conversational Spanish. I learned the rudiments of the language and could communicate with a bit of effort. In life it is the self-concept that defines one. It’s a bit like the people who think they can sing. Negative comments don’t register with them because they think you’re talking about someone else. Similarly, I used to think I spoke good Spanish. People were generally encouraging and told me how good I was although as I improved my comprehension, I also understood occasional comments such as, “He speaks a bit of Spanish.” That hurt, of course, but overall I never let my self-image suffer any major blows.

I also used to think I was good at French. But that story ended in tears ..

I spent a year on a reefer ship that sailed between Marseille in France and the ports of French speaking countries in West Africa including Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon. (Reefer is jargon for refrigerated cargo and not what some of you Bob Marley fans might be thinking). I thought it was a great opportunity to become proficient in French. Purchasing a French Linguaphone set of books and cassette tapes, I spent my free hours at sea studying, and practising my skills on innocent strangers in ports. Thanks to the delicate nature of our cargo, loading and discharging were relatively slow and our ship enjoyed long port stays. I got ample opportunities to practise.

I would walk up to random people and ask them directions for places I had no intention of visiting, and visit restaurants to order food and drinks even though I wasn’t hungry. I got my kicks from the interaction, the feeling of satisfaction that I could communicate in French, that people could understand me. I felt I was only a few steps away from reading Voltaire and Russeau in the original, in French. In short, my self-concept was running way ahead of reality. Until the day my illusions were shattered while traveling in a taxi in Abidjan with three shipmates.

I sat in the front and my colleagues were squashed in the back seat. I spoke in French to the driver who just kept nodding his head interjecting with the occasional, Oui Oui. I kept going, regurgitating everything I had taught myself, telling him about the weather, commenting on the places I liked in his country Cote d’Ivoire, filling him on my family details, the food I like … totally unconnected and disparate topics but which were part of the Linguaphone lessons I had already mastered. In short I was just showing off to my colleagues who sat quietly with open-mouthed admiration writ large upon their faces. After patiently suffering me for over ten minutes, the driver suddenly let go of both hands from the steering wheel of the running car, turned his face to me and crossing his forearms like an X, said,

“STOP – s’il vous plaît – STOP. Me – I no understand your English!”

My colleagues had the evening of their life talking to me in broken French and frequently crossing their arms and screaming “STOP s’il vous plaît”. They never let me forget the episode to the day I signed off the ship. When the ship sailed out late that night, I gave a solemn sea burial to the Linguaphone course. And that was the end of my liaison with the French language.

That was a side story. The sooner I forget it the better. I have more positive memories of my attempts to learn Spanish. As said earlier, it started with a ship where most of the crew was from Chile. I was one of three Indians on board. The conversation around the dinner table was in Spanish and I felt excluded. My ship called at most ports in Chile from Punta Arenas in Patagonia to the desert of Iquique near the Peruvian border. We also called at ports in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and every other South American country which was not landlocked. Spanish is spoken everywhere except in Brazil. It was imperative that I learned Spanish if I wanted get the pulse of the peoples of South America.

So, one day I told the motorman (a colleague who assists the engineer on watch in the engine room), Sergio Gijado, to speak to me only in Spanish and also to teach me some grammar. When the ship called at Valparaiso, Sergio’s home port, he brought me some grammar books. I made very good progress. Sergio was an excellent teacher, correcting my grammar, adding a few words to my vocabulary every day and unraveling the complexities of the sixteen Spanish tenses, all in the comfort of the engine control room.

Once, we had overhauled an engine unit in port (pulled out the piston, calibrated the cylinder liner and replaced the piston with an overhauled one). Those who have been to sea will know that everything on board has to be secured properly unless you want things flying about during rough seas. I was on watch when the ship sailed out and Sergio was assisting me. As soon as we cleared the breakwaters, the ship started rolling, gently at first and quite heavily after a short while. Sergio was taking his rounds in the engine room but soon he burst into the control room shouting in Spanish,

“Señor, el piśton se está cayendo.”

I figured out something was happening to the piston – but I did not know what because ‘cayendo’ was not in my Spanish lexicon. Sergio was normally a calm person, rarely perturbed by anything. However, the panic on his face was palpable. So I too panicked without really knowing why. I tried asking him in English what happened. But he continued answering in Spanish. Finally I shook him by his shoulders and screamed at him,

“Sergio, speak English! Habla inglés por favor!”

“Señor,” he said pointing in the direction of the engine room, “the piston – he is falling down.”

We ran to the cylinder head platform and what I saw then still wakes me up in cold sweat at night. We had forgotten to clamp the old piston in its place. The massive cast iron piston with a crown nearly a metre in diameter, attached to a piston rod two to three metres long and altogether weighing a couple of tonnes was about to slip from its pedestal on the bulkhead and fall on to the running engine! I immediately summoned more help and eventually we managed to clamp it in place.

But that experience only strengthened my resolve to improve my vocabulary. By the time I signed off that vessel, I was reasonably fluent in Spanish and Sergio continued to speak only Spanish to me until my last day on board.

So, that was the alaap or the prologue. Now you know why I came out of retirement, willingly. In the next post I hope to narrate my experiences in Valencia.