c u on top - satyabrata dam

My Blog came into existence exactly on this day in 2009. Today is its birthday or as they say, 'Happy Birthday'. Seriously speaking, even till the day I actually sat down to create and put up my first post on 29 April 2009, I had never thought that someday I would be a blogger, and going by the reports, a popular one at that. But my blog is due to several of my friends and of course due to my readers who keep encouraging me with their comments, emails and endearments. So while this is a time to celebrate (at least for me), it is also the time for a quick review, acknowledgements and few statistical tidbits. Enjoy and celebrate with me, and do wish 'many more to come' or 'many happy returns of the day' at least that way the collective wishes of all of you may keep me alive for some more time. Let's go back and begin at the beginning. I was and am still a techie greenhorn. I don't understand anything about computers or techno-gadgets. In my simple down to ...

All at Sea With 22 years of marine life, where I rose from being the lowest form of marine creature to an officer and (supposedly or allegedly) gentleman the title to this post may not raise many eyebrows at all. Big deal, most of you would say. If not at sea, on land certainly I have been always ‘all at sea’ forever lost and dreaming of my mountains and ice bound regions of our planet. But you will discover that this post could have no other title at all. A bit of self-propelled confession: I learnt to swim only after I joined the Navy and I joined the Navy to become a submariner, to be ranked among those elite men who are the rarest breed of men on Earth. And I had also by then discovered that submarines are always meant to be underwater – a place from where you cannot fall overboard, since you are already inside water. To most it may be a very disarming thought but to my imbecile brain it seemed the perfect reason to not hone my aquatic skills beyond the very basic without which I w...

This is less a tale of adventure than a tale of disbelief. If it hadn’t happened to me, I would find it extremely difficult to accept it as true. If today I drop the name of ‘Rotuma’ I am sure all of you would dive straight into Google. But I talk of a day when Google did not exist and neither did the internet for common man. I for one had never even heard of the place before I reached there and had not the slightest inkling that this sun-kissed you-will-miss-if-you-blink sized island would wrap up a story of mine that I had thought would never be concluded. I had first seen the sea at the age of 7 or 8 from Bhubaneswar, Orissa. Life is impressionable and exciting at that age and what I remember, of all the things that my mom had told me about the sea, is that the entire world is linked by sea and if one set sail on this vast expanse of water one could go around the world. The immense and the boundless sea seemed tailor-made for my wandering and wondering spirit. Though I saw the sea a...