Day 59--In Port, Chennai, India

23 October, In port, Chennai, India

I woke this morning to the smell of India. We’d been told that Chennai, located in the state of Tamil Nadu on the southeast coast of the Bay of Bengal, isn’t exactly the garden spot of India. It was founded by the British only 350 years ago, named Madras (and is still called Madras by most residents), and has evolved as an economic and manufacturing hub of southern India. Tata Motors has a big R&D complex just outside the city, and the port, where we’re tied up, is teeming with cargo ships, cranes, trucks, trains, and dirt . . . lots of dirt. That smell I woke to reminded me of one I haven’t “enjoyed” in over 50 years when I would stay at my grandmother’s walk-up in Chicago. Until the activity was banned, burning was the way to get rid of most garbage back then. Residents would take their garbage to an incinerator in the alley—usually an open, rusted oil drum with a few holes punched into the bottom—and light it, filling the air with a sweet-acidic, very pungent, eye-watering stench. That same smell fills the air of Chennai.

The cruise here from Mauritius was very smooth and, from a sailing perspective, uneventful. I had classes to teach and papers to grade every day, finishing the grading only last night just in time to attend the logistical pre-port briefing we receive the night before arriving in each port. This briefing was filled with cautions about the hazards of eating, drinking, and traveling in India. Doc Dave wore the baseball cap he brought along to wear for these briefings, and this time, the red caution light on top of the cap was flashing rapidly. The list of diseases one can contract in India filled 2 columns of a small-type PowerPoint slide. And his cautions were simple: don’t drink the water, don’t use the ice, don’t eat anything that hasn’t been cooked—a lot!—and don’t open your mouth in the shower.

In spite of all the cautions, even from the Indian students who joined us for the voyage from Mauritius, the students are, even now, pouring off the ship to explore the dusty streets of Chennai. I’ll be following them soon.

As I said, the cruise over the past 5 days was very smooth. In fact, the sea on Monday, our second day out from Mauritius, was flat calm, the smoothest, most glassy I’ve seen since we left Norfolk over 2 months—2 months!—ago. And those doldrums continued to today, as sailed into warmer and warmer waters (the most recent water temp we heard was 86°F) and heavier and heavier air. “Doldrums” was the word sailors used back in the days when wind was the only propulsion method. When the doldrums—calm air—hit, the ship couldn’t move, sometimes, after many days, driving sailors to insanity. At least, that’s the story I heard from one particularly well-versed student as we stood on the 7th deck one day looking at water that was smooth as a glass-top table.

Having smooth water was especially opportune Wednesday morning when many of the ship community gathered on the 4th deck, aft, for a sunrise memorial service. One of our faculty members, Cathy Skokan, lost her 25-year-old son, Thomas, in March. He died of unknown causes after leaving work one day complaining of nausea. His fiancé found him dead in his apartment the next day. After a funeral in Golden, Colorado, where Cathy teaches at Colorado School of Mines, Thomas’s remains were cremated, and Cathy brought them onboard to spread at sea. Thomas was an SAS alum, having sailed around the world in ’02, and Cathy says she knows that’s what Thomas would have wanted since he always talked about the voyage as his “life-changing experience.”

So, at 6am, we gathered on deck, just about at the exact moment we crossed the equator for the second time, now heading north. About 15 of us, including prior Friars Chapel and Bangs singing tenor, had formed a choir for the event and had practiced several times two hymns: “Morning has Broken,” which most of us knew already, and an original piece, “Take Me In,” that had been written especially for the occasion by Robert Klimek, the sole music faculty at Mines. Yes, Colorado School of Mines has a music program.

At 6:30, the service began, presided over by a lifelong learner who is a retired Unitarian minister, a very appropriate choice. As it came time for Cathy to spread Thomas’s ashes, the ship slowed to a crawl and began a very gradual 360° turn in the still waters of the Indian Ocean. Cathy emptied the urn over the aft railing into the sea, then the minister—don’t know his name—called others up in groups of five, and, as he called out the name of the student, staff, or faculty member and the name of the deceased, the voyager tossed a flower or flowers into the water. It was all very well done, and very touching.

The only slip came when Steven and Janet Dickstein went to the rail. Steven is a business professor at Ohio State—the voyage brings all types together—and he and Janet were tossing a flower in memory of a friend, Jennifer. As they approached the rail, the minister began reading the names, but somehow got them mixed up. “Jennifer Jones, in memory of Steven and Janet Dickstein,” he said. “Shit!” I heard Chapel whisper next to me, and the two of us started laughing just as the Dicksteins turned away from the railing to walk back toward us. They were smiling and shaking their heads. The minister never knew. For the rest of the day, we were telling Steven and Janet how much they were missed.

Tuesday, a so-called “reading day,” was the date for Sea Olympics, a traditional mid-voyage event. For these games, which ranged from extreme musical chairs to a non-alcoholic version of beer pong and included trivial pursuit and the obligatory tug-of-war, the students form teams based on their room locations, with each major hall on the ship designated a “sea.” So we had the Mediterranean Sea vs. the Baltic Sea vs. the Andaman Sea vs. some sea names I had never heard of. Each team dressed in their own color tee shirt or costume, many of the students painted their faces and bodies in sea colors, and the atmosphere onboard for the entire day was like what I remember as high-school field day combined with a Big-Ten football Saturday.

I had papers to grade, so for much of the day, I sequestered myself in the faculty lounge. But every hour or so, Jim Cooper—captain of the adult team known as “the nearly dead sea”—rousted me to participate in one activity or another. I was a judge for musical chairs (a dangerous job as competitors can get very belligerent about whose cheek hit the chair first), a team member for the human knot (10 of us join hands across a circle, then try to untie the resulting knot without unclasping our hands), and a coach for a game that was like shuffleboard but played with soap pucks on a watered-down deck.

The nearly-dead-sea team didn’t fare well in the overall standings, placing second to last. But everyone was rewarded with a barbeque on the 7th deck in the evening. The sunset that evening was magnificent, especially with the blazing barbeque cauldron sitting on the deck silhouetted by the setting sun. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures, but I’m sure some will be popping up soon on Facebook and YouTube.

So now we’re in Chennai. My plans for India are very simple: visit the local Hewitt office to pre-plan my FDP (field trip) to the Perot Systems call center. That trip comes up Tuesday afternoon, our last day in Chennai. Beyond that planning and the trip itself, I’m declaring a long weekend for myself. I’ll be looking for a nice 3- or 4-star hotel where I can park myself for a day or two, sit in front of a TV watching CNN and ESPN—maybe even pick up a few late-night moments of the UM-Penn State game—do some internetting on a high-speed connection, and, generally, vegetate.

This voyage is a wonderful experience, but we get no weekends. Life while at sea is intensely fast-paced planning for class, teaching, grading, and conferring with students. Then we hit port, and the pace continues, off on this or that trip, off (in my case) to this or that golf course. I can hear the “poor baby!” reactions, but this baby will be 65 in a week or so and needs an occasional day of nothing to do. So baby is taking a break.