Thirty-four-year-old Sahayam cannot sleep a wink at night. When he does, he sees images of himself caught in the middle of raging waves.
“He mumbles random things when he manages to catch some sleep. He is still traumatised by the memories of those two nights at sea,” says his wife Vinimol.
When the cyclone began its onslaught, Sahayam and his friends were well on their way back, having sensed trouble. But, with nine miles to go to reach the shore, the wind began taking them in the opposite direction, further interior.
“I haven’t seen waves as high as that in all my years of fishing. I had tied one of my hands to the boat, and thus managed to stay afloat even after the waves crashed into us mercilessly. A day later, a small ship passed by us. Even though they couldn’t rescue us, they intimated the Navy about our location. The winds had taken us 54 Nautical miles from the Kollam coast by then. But, sadly, not all of us could survive. I don’t know if I would ever go back to the sea again. I am scared at the thought, although there is no other way to survive,” says Sahayam, clutching a cap of INS Jamuna, the ship that saved him.
