Kuppu hollers at a boy standing in a street corner in Kasimedu to fetch her grandson Sakthivel. “He was supposed to go fishing with my grandson that day,” she says, as he jogs past her. “He was lucky.” Soon, R. Mayandi, S. Sakthivel, R. Kadumbadi, R. Suresh and D. Mani gather at the Sengalamman temple nearby, where two weeks ago, the entire neighbourhood sat praying for their return from sea. Their photos were splashed across newspapers on June 1 — the fishermen, who left Kasimedu for fishing on May 22, did not return that day.
“We lost hope of coming back alive,” sighs Mayandi, his head tonsured as an offering to his family deity, on his return. His voice low, yet firm, he recalls the events of that fateful day. “The five of us have been fishing together for the past nine years,” begins the 36-year-old.
It was a regular afternoon when they left home on a fibre boat that Mayandi’s brother bought over six months ago. “He took a loan and purchased it for Rs. 1,65,000,” says Mayandi. “He spent Rs. 20,000 to line the insides with foam.” It was this lining that saved their lives — it made the boat sturdy and more buoyant.
The sail was smooth; they reached their usual spot at 5 p.m. and cast the line for mavalasi fish.
At 10.30 p.m., they set sail towards home with their catch and were halfway there, when a rogue wave thundered towards them. It flipped their boat in one swift move and rolled past as though nothing had happened. The starry sky tumbled upside down and the fishermen plunged face down into the black sea.
They did not panic; they were men of the sea, after all and scrambled on top of the boat. If they did not return by midnight, they knew a search party would set out from Kasimedu. And so they waited with the anchor cast. But eventually, nothing worked in their favour. “At around 5.30 a.m., the anchor got cut off,” recalls Mayandi. One of them swam underneath to release the engine and let it hang underwater to hold the boat in position. But that too, gave way. So did the second engine. “As long as we were on the same spot, it would’ve been easy for us to be rescued. But we kept moving due to the current,” says Mayandi.
Two days went by in a bluish blur. “On the third day, we knew for certain we had no chance of survival,” says Kadumbadi. Their sun-burnt faces began to burn and their stomachs seemed to be on fire. They did everything their instinct told them to, to survive. “We ate raw fish that we caught using the bait we retrieved from the boat; the algae that stuck to the boat’s underside…we even ate two smelly kadamba fish,” remembers Kadumbadi.
There were tears, prayers… “But we decided that if we were going to die, we would all die together,” says Mayandi. Thoughts of their family haunted them. In their thirties and late twenties, the men were all breadwinners with little children back home, with the exception of Suresh, who was unmarried.
One afternoon, they saw far away, etched on the blue, the ghost of a fibre boat. Was the sea playing tricks on them? Sakthivel volunteered to check it out. “I swam for one-and-a-half hours to reach it — it was a fishing boat from Andhra,” he says. The fishermen came for them the next morning.
And so their feet touched land eight days after they set out to sea. In a state of dream and exhaustion that consumed them, they entered Andhra Pradesh. Hours passed in a haze of new faces who offered black tea and kanji; and at whose feet the fishermen fell at, in gratitude. When they called home, words failed them. “We cried and cried,” smiles Kadumbadi.
Relieved as they are, the five of them are weary. “We lost our boat and have to pay for the rescue efforts…we have debts of upto four lakhs,” says Mayandi. It will take several years for them to rebuild their lives.
They are going back to sea today though — none of them have even a trace of fear. As you read this, they could be sailing in the same waters that almost killed them — a fisherman will never hold a grudge against the sea.
There seems to be no end to the problem of fishermen getting lost at sea, despite the progress of technology, feels M.D. Dayalan, president of Indian Fishermen’s Association. “In the past, the catamarans our ancestors used were ingenious. No matter how strong the waves were, catamarans brought them safely ashore,” he says. He hopes that the advanced equipment that the Coast Guards have are employed to help the fisherfolk community in situations like these. “If they had been involved in the search operations, the men would’ve been rescued much faster,” he feels.
