At home on the seabed

There is nothing that inhibits Shekhar Kale. He’s never declined a “job”. All he asks for are appropriate equipment and tools before plunging into the deepest recesses of Mumbai’s coast.

The 59-year-old is a junior foreman driver in the Salvage section at the Mumbai Port Trust. The port, he says, is the only one in the country to have an in-house team of divers, at hand 24/7 to perform all kinds of tasks such as retrieving containers and cargo that falls off vessels into the sea while loading/unloading, fixing ‘jackets’ (a steel frame that supports an oil rig’s deck) at offshore oil platforms, cutting, welding and maintaining underwater oil pipelines and a host of other specialised works. These include plugging holes in shipping vessels, clearing the jetting of vessel fans that may be obstructed by plastic or rubber, ensuring harbor lock gates function smoothly and underwater photography and videography.

In the 42 years he’s spent diving into the sea, he’s brought to the surface a windswept crane that landed into the sea at the Indira dock, re-laid under water British-era rail tracks that had come off during dredging, brought out 250 bombs and grenades from a well, and fit an underwater transducer echo sensor in the hull of a survey vessel while at sea, despite the latter being a dry dock undertaking. Of course, these are all highly risky ventures and “firsts” that have earned him laurels, rewards and a Limca record. “I’ve also retrieved dozens of taxis and more than a hundred dead bodies,” says Kale. “When I started out, in the late 1970s, there used to be a lot of incidences of taxis driving off into the water at Bhaucha dhakka (Ferry wharf).”

And he does all this in absolute blackness. “Mumbai has a muddy sea. Once the seabed is disturbed, the mud renders searchlights useless,” explains Kale. “You have to use your hands to ‘see’.” This is not the case at Bombay High though, where, he says, “on a clear, sunny day, you have good visibility even at a depth of 180ft”.

The task he has to accomplish determines the depth of his dives. For dives up to 60ft, he uses surface oxygen supply and on deeper dives, where the time available to finish the task is limited, he relies on an oxygen tank. His deepest plunge has been to about 260ft (80m) to collect soil samples and fit jackets for oil rigs when he was working for a private diving services company in Mumbai. “At that depth, you only get 20minutes at a stretch and then you have to gradually ascent, stopping at regular intervals,” he says. “If you come up without stopping, you risk decompression sickness, such as skin rash, joint pains, paralysis and even death.” Does the prospect of things going awry in such scenarios not scare him? “Abhi habit ho gaya hai (Am habituated to this now),” says Kale, who utters Lord Ganesha’s name as he splashes into the water before each dive. “Every task that has to be done under the water is dangerous, yet most accidents occur in shallow water.”

Unique workplace

* Shekhar Kale was in class four when he learnt to swim, under “Percy sir” at the Mahatma Gandhi municipal pool in central Mumbai’s Shivaji Park neighbourhood.

* After his matriculation, he decided to put to use his swimming prowess; an interview call for the role of a seaman ended up in him joining a private diving services company where he learnt deep sea diving, underwater cutting, welding, photography etc.

* His family was skeptical about the work, but Kale, just 18 at the time, wanted “to do the work, especially because underwater diving was something that no one else was doing at the time”.

* “Not many people would take up such a job,” he admits because people get scared of the water. “But then there is risk in every aspect of life. I could be walking on the street and be bumped off by a vehicle.”

* “The sea,” he says philosophically, “doesn’t keep anything in its belly. It throws back to the surface whatever doesn’t belong inside.”