WIND OF LOVE - VENTO DI AMORE

WIND OF LOVE - VENTO DI AMORE

by Mo Zuckerman

There was a massive explosion and fire on board the offshore oil
platform ONGC B- 121 Sagar Ratna in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai. On
March 11,1999 the environmental nightmare began in India. An Oil and
Natural Gas Corporation of India platform stationed six miles off the
coast of Mumbai suffered a fatal blowout. Five "roustabouts" on the
platform were killed and nine were injured. The flaring tubes caught
fire and crimson and orange flames leaped hundreds of feet into the
sky. The noise was deafening. Like Roman god Vulcan the huge fire kept
on burning for days. During that time, 250,000 gallons of crude oil
bubbled to the surface and was spread into a 900 square mile slick by
winds and swells. Birds and fishes died in thousands.

First on the scene were two Russian women pilots with two helicopters
from Offshore Energy Services based in San Clemente, California. They
were working in Mumbai on a seismic and geophysical survey project.
They repeatedly swooped low and landed on the helicopter pad just in
the rear of the burning oil platform and evacuating first the dead and
injured to the shore. Witnesses said they were very skilled and
fearless. Shortly after the fourth trip to Sagar Ratna, there was
another massive explosion, and they had to ditch the burning
helicopters in the sea.

The Indian Coast Guard rescued them.
They were lying in the Intensive Care Unit, morphine was being fed
through their veins to reduce the burn related pains. The inhabitants
of this strange, temporary world are a hodgepodge of scarred survivors,
poetic images of wind of love and memories from their past.

Olga Valentina Romanova, 36, was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Olga
graduated from Zhukovskiy Military Air Academy. She was a Top Gun in
the Air Academy, placed 8th among 122 other officer cadets in her
class. In 1988 she flew MiG 23 Fighter based in Bagram, Afghanistan,
and later she flew MiG 29 Fighter based in Lipetsk.

Lola Maksimovna Ulanova, 35, was born in Leningrad, modern day St.
Petersburg. Lola was a graduate of Moscow Aviation Institute and was a
member of the Soviet National Aerobatic Team. In 1988 she flew Sukhoi
25 Fighter based in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and later, the top of the
line Sukhoi 27 Fighter based in Lipetsk.

They immigrated to America in 1996, and lived in San Clemente,
California. Lola and Olga were thespian-lesbian lovers.

Recovering in Mumbai's Breach Candy Hospital they recalled their lives
in San Clemente. On the pleasant shore of the California's Gold Coast,
about halfway between Los Angeles and the Mexican border stands the
small community of San Clemente. President Nixon's "Casa Pacifica", a
cream and red tiled roof Spanish mansion, was in the southern part of
town. This "Casa Pacifica" became the site of numerous historical
meetings between world leaders.

Deferential palms cool its shoreline, and before it stretches a long
dazzling beach and sandstone bluffs. It had 4 miles of pristine sandy
beaches with access trails cut into the bluff above. Lately it is a
summer resort of the notable and fashionable people. A decade ago it
was almost deserted after the vacationers went north in April. Now
expensive homes dot the hills north of Interstate 5. But when this
story began Spanish tile roofs of dozen old villas rotted like water
lilies among the palms, including Casa Romantica - where Hollywood
stars of the 1930s and 1940s sunned and sinned on their way to Tijuana,
Mexico.

At night a necklace of lights outlined the curved bay between San
Onofre and Dana Point. On balmy full moon nights the enchanting silvery
sea shimmered. The beach was popular with the swimmers, sunbathers and
surfers. The area included a marshy area where San Mateo Creek met the
shoreline and Trestles Beach. This was a well-known California surfing
site where "Endless Summer" was filmed. Whales, dolphins and sea lions
could be seen offshore from time to time. The coastal terrace was
chaparral-covered. People came to this picturesque small coastal
paradise with green hills, profusion of colorful flowers and palm trees
lined streets to escape the stresses and strains of city life. In the
early morning the distant images of Catalina island, the cream walls
and red tiles of the old houses, and the green hills of Sierra Santa
Margarita were cast across the water and lay in the ripples and rings
sent up by the rocks and sea plants through the clear shallows.
Sandpipers, ducks and seagulls made their home in the Arroyo San
Juan.

Lola and Olga made their home near the San Onofre Beach, in San
Clemente. Their home was on the sandstone bluffs. San Clemente boasted
"the world's finest climate", with sunshine 342 days per year. The
annual average temperature is 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Bounded on the
east by the Cleveland National Forest and on the west by the great
Pacific Ocean. The small town had flower lined streets and beautiful
bougainvilleas named after French Admiral Louis de Bougainville. The
colors are fantastic: golden yellow, bright crimson, purple, pink and
other variations in between. All of these bright colors added joy to
Lola and Olga's lives.

In the late summers in Southern California they experienced the hot
Santa Ana winds, which blew in from the Mojave Desert. These winds
reminded them of the Sanskrit poems of poet Vidyakara, who was born in
11th Century in Jagaddala, near present day Malda, West Bengal in
India.

The breezes Vidyakara described were the pleasant spring breezes that
blew from the South, from Malabar. The breezes were cooled and made
fragrant by the sandalwood forests, cloves and the sweet smell of
flowers. Vidyakara thought of spring breezes only in the context of
love.

Olga and Lola loved the description of the journey of the winds as it
traveled from Kerala, to Tamilnadu, to Andhra and traversed the rivers
Kaveri, Murala and Narmada. On reaching north the south wind filled the
cuckoos throat, and opened the spring jasmine bud. The south wind put
the poet in an erotic mood, as a lover who kisses damsels, dishevels
their hair, and tumbling on their breasts.

" The breeze from Malabar plays all the arts of Cupid,

Kissing women's faces and tumbling on their breasts,

Disheveling their hair and tossing up their skirts,

He excites their bodies, agitates their hearts,

And allays their past resentments,

As, like a lover, he embraces every limb."

Or, the poet pictured the south wind as an erring husband, leaving his
loving wife, the southland, the wind blew gently, fearful of her
resentment, to the new mistress, the northern plains and foothills of
Himalayas.

Regularly the spring breezes are described as "looseners of the knot of
anger in maidens breasts."

But Kalidasa's Meghdoot described the rain drop fall on a girl
as,

"The first drop of rain stayed momentarily on her eyelids, dropped on
her lips, shattered on her hard breasts and trickled down her triple
fold and after a long time disappeared in her navel"

Olga thought of more winds and breezes. They knew the dreaded pampero
wind that tears across southern Argentina. A related wind, the simoun,
from the Arabic word for poison, shrieks over the Sahara, whipping up
sand and dust into fearful, sharp-grained chevaux de frise. Herodotus,
the great Greek traveler and historian whom his younger contemporary
Thucydides uncharitably called "the father of lies," doubtless got it
right when he reported the story of an ancient Libyan army that marched
off two and a half millennia ago into the deep Sahara to find and
subdue the lord of these storms. The expedition never returned,
"disappearing, in battle array, with drums beating and cymbals
clashing, into a red cloud of swirling sand."

The Assyrians, it is said, did much the same, sending an army of
archers to combat the approaching clouds. And for good reason: a dust
storm once buried Ur of the Chaldees, cause enough to seek vengeance.
But no one lived to take revenge against the deadly sand storm.

The simoun had many local equivalents: the Moroccan sirocco, the Libyan
ghibli, the Saudi khamsin, the Egyptian zoboa, the Australian
"brickfielder," the Mongolian karaburan, the Sudanese haboob, the
Mauritanian harmattan, and the Indian loo and the bhoot in the Thar
Desert. Then there was the "hava- i- shaitoon" (Devil's Winds) in the
Dhasht-e- Kavir desert in Iran.

Ancient humans deified the winds in hope of assuaging their fits of
anger or enticing its beneficial moments. The Chinese called the wind
ty fung meaning the envoy of heaven and earth. The Hindus called it
Indra and the Japanese Fujin. Sailors on the sea who depended upon the
proper combination of wind and sail spoke of the winds as nor'easters,
gales and trade winds as well as the lack of them: the doldrums.

In Mexico, the hot Sonora Desert had its own winds, sonora caliente,
followed by torrential rains called culebras de agua. These rains would
surely be considered as priceless blessings of nature were they not
always accompanied by the most horrible thunderstorms, which not
infrequently do great damage to men and animals in the villages and in
the fields. One cannot listen to the continuous crashing of the thunder
without shuddering. At times such thunderstorms brought with them a
damaging hail, which destroyed all growing things in the field and
garden; or there may occur a ruinous cloudburst, in Sonora called
culebras de agua, or water snakes, which flooded over country and
villages, devastating them.

Sometimes the thunderstorms were accompanied by violent windstorms and
whirlwinds, which lift the sand in a very thick, twisted column almost
to the clouds. Nothing these whirlwinds seize can withstand their
power. Hence, during these months everyone avoids traveling in the
afternoon if possible, because of the constant danger of being caught
in such a storm. Therefore, wherever one reaches a shelter around noon,
or even a little before, the day's journey is ended.

Moving across the Pacific from the deserts of northern Chile is a hot
wind known as the puelche. The effect of this wind on residents of
Northern Chile causes nerves to become raw and tempers to flair as the
combination of heat and oppressive humidity becomes insufferable.
Before crossing the Pacific and gaining a load of moisture, called the
camanchaca, the puelche also brought discomfort for those inhabiting
the northern rim of the great Desierto de Atacama lashing them with
dust, sand and dry, hot air.

The dreaded hot wind "Afghan", or Bad-I-Saad-O-Bist-Roz in Farsi, blew
for about 120 days a year, came in from the desert. The atmosphere of
tedium and lyrical musing was heightened by the effects of the dry,
hot, all-pervasive and heavy wind known as the "Afghan," which
descended out of nowhere and blew unrelentingly all day. The red-hot
wind came from the westward, booming among the tinder-dry trees and
pretending that the rain was on its heels.

But the rains never came.

The wind beats incessantly on the exposed roof with a succession of
blasts of waves, which vary in length and violence, causing all loose
parts to vibrate into sound. And the winds are hissing, whimpering,
whistling, muttering and murmuring, whining, wailing, howling,
shrieking - all the inarticulate sounds uttered by man and beast in
states of intense excitement, grief, terror, rage, and what not. And as
they sink and swell and are prolonged or shattered into compulsive sobs
and moans, and overlap and interweave, acute and shrill and piercing,
and deep and low, all together forming a sort of harmony, it seems to
express the whole ancient dreadful tragedy of man on earth.

In 1988 Lola and Olga flew many combat missions in Afghanistan. Afghan
villages were leveled on a daily basis, in order to wipe out the rural
population. A typical Russian attack on a village was vividly described
with the decimation of Bamyan, a small agricultural village with a
population of around 800 people. The village consisted almost entirely
of women and children, as the men were either away with the resistance
or escaping government conscription. Yet, the village was still
targeted for sustained attacks.

First they are attacked by MiGs or Sukhois based near Bagram or
Kandahar. Olga and Lola loitered over the target briefly, and then
suddenly make a sharp turn, banked with sun at their back and swooped
down very rapidly, firing blazing 30mm cannons and rockets, and climb
up almost vertically to resume their second attack. The scream of the
MiG 25s with twin Klimov RD-33 turbojets scared the devil out of the
living, and the sharp pitched noise of Sukhoi 25 with twin Lyulka
AL-31F turbojets gave a heart attack to anybody within 2000 feet. At a
great distance they sounded like rolling thunder. Olga and Lola showed
no emotions after these sorties.

On one day in 1987, at about 9:00 am, the villagers who were going
about their daily chores spotted six Russian Mi-24 helicopter gunships
high in the sky, and flying straight towards them. As the helicopters
came closer, they began firing. The flimsy mud houses were ripped apart
easily by the high-explosive rockets, and their occupants were killed
or maimed outright. There were no mercy, compassion or feelings
involved.
As soon as the first pair of Mi-24 helicopters had ran out of rockets,
they circled the houses and fields, firing at any moving object with
their machine guns. Then the second pair of helicopters would come in
and fire more and more rockets. Nearly every casualty was a woman or a
child. These attacks were carried out with ruthless precision.
There was no air defense at all in the village, and the bombing
continued for two hours. Meanwhile, villagers cowered in the rubble or
among boulders. If there seemed to be any halt in the firing, the
uninjured would move out to help the injured. But any movement below
was a sign for Russian gunships to attack again, again and again.
Eventually after repeated firings, the air attacks ceased.

Virtually the entire village was decimated, with many hundreds of
people dead or injured. Most of these villages became ghosts of the
past with only the very old and limbless people. No one was left to
lament.

The next phase of the Russian attack against Bamyan began when two
hundred infantrymen approached the village, backed up by tanks and BTR
armored vehicles. They spread out before opening fire. High explosive
shelling, mortar attacks and the pounding of machine guns further
destroyed the rubble of the village.

Every possible place of concealment was bombed or shot at, and this
continued for half an hour. Then the helicopter gunships returned to
their base. A deathly calm descended on the village.
Finally at about midday, the Soviet Army Commander called for a halt to
the attack. A Soviet Army officer shouted through a loudspeaker for
anyone still living to come out. No attention at all was given to the
wounded, and the small handful of living old men were separated from
the wailing, shocked and petrified women and children. Russian soldiers
set fire to the few standing buildings, then left, taking a few young
men for interrogation. The wounded were left to bleed and die.

Afghan villages were encircled, their whole population was terminated
stealthily, with bayonets and knives, animals were slaughtered down to
even the last cat, special chemicals were applied to cause rapid
decomposition of the corpses, women were raped and thrown from
helicopters, and finally the whole site was bombed beyond recovery. In
many cases though, the Soviets would sweep through a village and then
booby trap everything in sight - mosques, furniture, fruit trees,
fields, food storage bins. Apart from that, helicopters would drop
small, surface antipersonnel mines throughout roads and vast expanses
of land. Such were the notorious air-dispensed PFM- 1 "Butterfly" mines
which were colored drab green or sand for concealment, and which would
remain active for months before exploding themselves. It killed and
maimed 150,000 in Afghanistan.

The memories of war in Afghanistan, and the fire aboard Sagar Ratna
seemed to fade away in their morphine induced narcotic trance.

Lola and Olga found peace and solitude in India's poet Vidyakara's
poem, who wrote,

"As the wind blows, bearing drops of frost,

The god of Love, as though he feared the cold,

Hastily enters the hearts of lonely hearts.

To warn himself at the fire of their grief."