For three Myanmarese fishermen, who had survived 40 days at sea on a small bamboo raft and a month-long jail term, the agonising wait to return home is finally over.
Tun Naing Oo (35), Nyi Nyi (30) and Zaw Naing Oo (33) are all set to take the train from Chennai to Kolkata on Sunday, on the first leg of their journey to Yangon city in Burma. There, they will reunite with their families who feared they had lost the men after they went fishing one afternoon in October, 2013.
“We were fishing in the Bay of Bengal near home, with our bamboo boat anchored. A sudden storm and huge tides damaged the anchor and, despite our efforts, the raft kept drifting further into the sea,” said Nyi Nyi. He was speaking to The Hindu in Burmese, translated by K. Gurumurthy, a social worker based in MKB Nagar who works for the repatriation of foreign fishermen who drift into Indian waters and are then imprisoned here.
With small rations of rice, dry fish, and water, which hardly lasted for two days, the trio found themselves at the mercy of the wind and waves. “Hope arrived in the form of two vessels, whose crew tried to rescue us, but in vain. We survived on rainwater and fresh catch,” Tun Naing added.
On the fortieth day, when Tun was weak and barely conscious, help finally arrived.“A blessing from Buddha came in the form of a fishing trawler from Tamil Nadu that spotted us,” Zaw recalled.
It was then mid-November and the men had drifted thousands of nautical miles close to Vedaranyam town in Nagapattinam district. The fishermen were rescued but imprisoned for trespassing into Indian waters. “After legal proceedings that extended for nearly a year, the orders came this November 14 for them to head home. Sadly, we had to pay a fine of Rs. 11,700 each to the Immigration authorities in Chennai who claimed they overstayed, despite the fact that the time taken for receiving the official documents for repatriation was only holding them back,” Mr. Gurumurthy stated.