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rising up.
    "We need to escape from here and this is my final order," Kamal said. It was funny to receive ‘orders’ when each person’s designations were light years away and we were naked humans struggling in the battle stuck between life & death.
    "Let's try one last time. The compartment hatch should open now. The pressure might have changed," I said.
    I balanced myself and quickly went to the hatch to give it one last shot. Prathap also stepped in and we opened the hatch with great difficulty.
    And that led us into the second compartment.
    I quickly closed the vault and the gust of water raged against the closed vault on the other side. I could feel its rage ready to eat us alive. Silence prevailed. I saw Ramana collapse; I went to him, picked him up and placed him flat on the dining table. It’s tragic that the dining table was now a life bearer. It once helped the doctor treat the crew. It now bore a collapsed person. It had been a surgery bed in an operation theatre. He was alive but was unconscious. He had severe injuries on his head. On seeing Ramana alive, it gave me hope that there might be other officers and crew alive in the other compartments too.
    Ramana opened his eyes; he looked joyful to see us alive.
    "Don't worry, you will be fine." I assured him with a hopefully.
    I went up to Kamal; he was inspecting the sonar log form and wave sheet. He also looked up at the notes written by Ramana.
    "We are stuck in the hill. It will be difficult for the rescue team to find us," he said.
    "What shall we do now?" Prathap asked
    "We are nearly 500 meters deep. We need protective life suit gear to swim up or else we wouldn’t survive. It will take us at least 4-5 minutes to get to the water surface and to do that holding our breath is one task in itself.”
    Prathap inspected the second compartment for any life suits, but couldn’t find any.
    It was normal practice for everybody onboard to keep their respective life suits with them, but the crew considering this to be training, hadn’t bothered.
    We all were still searching for the life suits, but Prathap gave up on his pursuit. He trudged towards the sonar room, picked up a pen and paper, and began writing something which I noticed.
    "I got married quite recently, and I promised my wife that I would write a letter whenever I could," he said with a grief stricken face.
    It dawned on us that we weren’t going to get out of this alive. Taan Singh found a couple of torches and turned them on. The compartment suddenly lit up.
    Kamal too was unable to find any life suits.
    "There are no life suits here!" he said.
    "I think, they should be in fourth Compartment under the emergency gear," I said.
    "Why aren’t they placed here?"
    "I don't know Sir."
    "Now we need to go to the fourth compartment!"
    "Let's open the third Compartment hatch and make our way into the other compartments. First let’s look for survivors," I said.
    "No Sir. It's not a good idea," Prathap said.
    "What do you mean by ‘not a good idea’?"
    "We are safe here and we know that nobody is alive there in the control room and it will be very risky for all of us."
    "Why do you say that it is risky? Haven’t we all signed up for this? If that’s the case, it won’t be right on our part to leave them here, and find our way back like cowards."
    "We can help the trapped officers by bringing in the rescue teams and for that we should first escape through the torpedo tubes."
    "You are acting like a coward." I walked towards the hatch to open it.
    Nobody was interested in supporting me. They were all standing at their places. I guess everybody was scared of lying there in insipidity and welcoming death.
    "I agree with Prathap. If you open that hatch Arjun, even this compartment will be filled with water and there will be no scope for us to escape," Kamal said.
    I looked up at Kamal; I was not expecting such callous behavior from a responsible political bureaucrat like Kamal.
    "If you all are worried about