11^th may, 2011

The first minutes after an accident bring man an exaggerated faith in his powers. Time passes and so does that faith. Hope of being rescued arises-someone knows of your existence.

Hope passes. Destructive stages lie in wait: bewilderment (why doesn’t anyone come and rescue me?), impatience, anger, despair. And then the final stage. It is customary to consider it avoid. Thus, the stage does not exist. The victim-if he has not lost the ability to think by that time-realizes that the hope of being rescued he had before is the answer. So is the faith he had in his powers.

Heidi hoped she is would be rescued. And she continued to believed that the world small.

Let us change gears and slow the pace of this story. Heidi was not alone in the mistaken belief that “the world is small.” The author is acquainted with it, too, and not second-hand. A journalist’s work involves travel. I have traveled and flown about the world for many years now. And it really does seem as though distances have been reduced: today you are in one part of the world, tomorrow you are in another. But have they? A few unpleasant occurrences in the mountains and desert helped me realize this was a delusion! One instance in particular come to mind-it bears greater similarity to the story being told here. The incident occurred in an appropriate place-the “Bermuda Triangle.” Three times in a twenty-four hour period the Boeing in which I was flying from Colombia to New York. USA (Heidi Ann Porch’s country) came close to disaster-three times. Each time, when the engines stalled, we found ourselves over boundless, deserted expanses of sea; they were not rushing past below us as before. We were spinning our wheels in a vast space. Each time the barracudas-the worst members of the shark family-were waiting for those the sky promised them. It all ended well-even when the engines caught fire. Ended and was part of the past. But the insight I gained stayed with me: the world we fly in and find ourselves face to face with in times of trouble is not small but vast. It is boundless. It did not become any smaller because we started to fly faster. It is still as it was at the hour of creation. It is constantly huge, invariably dangerous and equally indifferent to all.

Radio operators in Hawaii picked up the SOS, and a Coast Guard plane was sent up. It started looking for traces of a crash. When the pilot’s initial attempts ended in failure they surmised that the search might take longer than expected. Even of they were lucky; however, they would not be able to rescue the pilot. That could only be accomplished by someone who was right alongside; in other words, by sailors. A ship had to be brought to the probable area of the crash. Abandoning the search for Heidi, they began looking for ship. It look quite some time……..

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov

9^th may, 2011

Water patterned with rainbow colored streaks and swirls of gasoline washed over the Cessna. Somehow Heidi managed to grab hold of an aileron and then pull herself up into the orange life raft. Its low sides would be no protection against even moderately choppy seas, but it floated. Fortunately, there were no waves. All around, as far as the eye could see, stretched the ocean, as calm as a meadow. There was nothing except water and light.

The captain played the piano.

Heidi prayed to God that the Cessna would not sink straight away. First, she would be easier to find the plane was visible to aircraft and ships. Second, the rising wind and waves might carry the life raft away, and then the coordinates she had radioed to Hawaii would seem muddled. Rocked by the waves, Heidi held on to the stabilizer. It was the last service the plane could do her.

A horror of Earth’s boundless expanses brushed against her consciousness. Not long before she had been sure that nothing could be smaller than the world she sped over on the wings of her Cessna and her youth. After all, she had an engine at her command. Late twentieth century man’s belief that the world is ridiculously small was firmly embedded in her soul. That belief, along with her stamina, served Heidi well. She believed that another minute would go by and a ship would appear on the horizon. Or a plane would appear in the sky. Or some kind of sailing vessel even would show up. Or, a submarine would surface, for goodness sake! Youth has a right to count on that, too.

But hope and reality are different things. Hours went by and nothing changed. Heidi had crashed in one of the most deserted areas of the Pacific Ocean.

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov

8th may,2011
Captain Mochalov left the bridge and peeped into the mess. Two sailors were resting after their watch. The ship's doctor, Natasha Popova, leafed through some magazines. It was the best time of any voyage-the journey homeward. Mochalov sat down at the piano and struck a few chords. He was not a particularly good player, but it was something he enjoyed.
The Cessna 182 hit the water, nosed over and came to rest, belly up. The cabin was underwater. Deafened by the crash, Heidi did not recover immediately. When her head finally cleared it struck her that she would be unable to get out of the cabin, which meant drowning in the sinking plane. Her back hurt but she could bend it-there was nothing seriously the matter. Heidi pulled out the inflatable life raft and unbuckled her seat belt. Then, opening the canopy, she took one last gulp of air as water poured into the cockpit. Pushing off the duralumin fuselage she rose to the surface:
"Alive and in one piece." The sun made her dizzy. The rubber cylinders of the landing gear went back before her eyes.

From- Gennady Bocharov's
No Man Is An Island

2^nd May 2, 2011

Captain Mochalov was a man whose very appearance did not permit him to pass the captaining profession by. His body was well-proportioned, his eyes-dark blue, hair-a silvery gray, skin-tanned. Perhaps all that kept him from being the very image of a sea skipper was his diction-it was the diction of a man who forgot about his subordinates.

He stood on the bridge, bit down on his pipestem and thought, “What next?”

Heidi rejoiced in the flight. She blessed the moment she had made her choice. “My life could have turned out differently,” Heidi thought with light-hearted horror, “But not now.”

The captain did not give useless things a thought. But pipes were another matter. He had nine of them, curved and straight. If one was not suitable for a particular tobacco, he switched it for another that was.

The pipe he was smoking tasted good. Every once in a while he looked through his binoculars. He had long before gotten used to the fact that everything his ship was sailing towards would eventually be behind him.

Heidi glanced at the oil pressure gauge: the needle had fallen.

“Hey, what’s this!” Heidi exclaimed.

The needle fell. Heidi accelerated. The needle fell. She throttled back. The needle fell. Soon it froze at the bottom of the scale. The engine coughed several times, then began to heat up. All thrust ceased. Heidi tried to hold the Cessna in the air stream. The plane lost speed. There was a sudden, loud noise and the engine fell silent. Then Heidi knew that the flight was over. The Cessna’s altitude over the open ocean began to diminish rapidly. Heidi kept the plane from going into a spin and scattered distress signals over the airwaves. She hoped they would be heard. At least in Hawaii they should, she thought.

Faster and faster the plane plummeted towards the water that blinded like broken glass-someone had smashed all the windows in the Empire State Building at once. The world, which had been such a friendly place not long before, expanded until it was frighteningly boundless.

Heidi’s last radio communication was, "I am alone up here, I am descending into the ocean.”

From-
No Man Is An Island

It had already happened.
The young American pilot, Heidi Ann Porch, received permission to take off. She lifted her single engine Cessna 182 into the sky from a California airport and set course for Oakland, New Zealand.
It was Heidi's tenth flight across the Pacific. As on the previous nine trips she was delivering aviation technology to customers in Australia and New Zealand.
I. A. Mochalov, the fifty-seven year old captain of the ocean-going refrigerator ship, the Ussuriiskaya taiga, came onto the bridge. The vessel, on course for Vladivostok, was approaching the Tsugaru-kaikyo. This was considered the best passage between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan.
Heidi listened to music.
The captain listened to the weather report. Off the Japanese coast a typhoon was forming.
To Heidi it seemed as though her plane was suspended over a motionless ocean. At such moments she felt slightly irritated: everything should happen fast. But when ships appeared below, dots on the water that glistened like broken glass, she saw that she was moving swiftly towards her destination. Soon she would be landing. Arrival always held the promise of something new for her.
Heidi only believed in what lay ahead.

From Gennady Bocharov's novel-
No Man Is An Island

An Interview Of Great Actresses Shabana Aazami

Yesterday I had listened An Interview with Shabana Aazami on BBC online news channel. If we see the history of Hindi Cinema we will found Shabana’s work is a remarkable in it. She was the artist who started working in commercial and Art movies parallel.

Shabana the daughter of Urdu poet Kaify Aazami and theater artist Shoukat Kaify Aazami always liked to work in theater. Theater is her first love, but she got inspired by Jaya Bhadudi and turn to movies. A brilliant student of Film Institute of Pune got an opportunity to work with renowned film director Shyam Benegal and became a centre of attraction for Indian audience.

The part of interview impress me was Shabana’s opinion on society. As a social worker she said, ”At a time India is living in many centuries, like there are 21^st century women who is leading the nation as a president of India( Pratibha Tai Patil),President of ruling party(Sonia Gandhi)…, Some are traditional house wives living 19^th century lifestyle and there is 18^th century mentality which is killing the baby girl in mother’s womb”. Shabana thinks only education can change this picture. For that everyone has to come forward. Then she was happy to talk about ‘Mizava Society’ which was founded by her father Kaify Aazami. Now Shabana is looking after this social work and paying tribute to her father.

From the newspapers and magazines I knew heroin Shabana Aazami but today I came to know about great human being Shabana Aazami.

Hi!
after long time i am writing something. Diwali vacations are going to finish. I have to be ready for new term.