The Pirates are coming

New Indian Express

5 days ago

On what was supposed to be a relaxed Sunday, April 11, 2010, Pralav Dhyani, a deck cadet on the cargo ship RAK Afrikana, was engaged in routine deck work after breakfast. His peaceful morning was disrupted by an unfamiliar sound, initially dismissed as a car backfiring. However, when the sound repeated, Dhyani recognised it as something out of the ordinary. Moments later, the unsettling truth dawned on him: the cargo ship was under attack by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean.
This is how the author and 36-year-old founder of ARC Continental FZE, a ship brokerage and consulting firm in Dubai describes the attack on his cargo ship by Somali pirates in his book, Hijacked: A True Story of Surviving 331 Days with Somali Pirates (HarperCollins). At present, a businessman in Dubai, 15 years after the incident, Dhyani, in an interview with The Morning Standard, recalls those turbulent 331 days when he was at the mercy of the pirates. 'The idea of writing the book came to me during COVID-19. The world came to a standstill during the pandemic. People were forced to stay inside their homes. They were desperate to move out and move around freely. At that time, I remembered the days when I was grounded and a hostage of the Somali pirates. I thought of writing and sharing my story to tell readers how I overcame my confinement under gunpoint for 331 days,' he says.
Hijacked… perfectly captures the author's state of mind—his helplessness, survival skills, and his refusal to give up hope in the midst of crisis. 'There were of course moments of highs and lows. I did not know when I would be able to go back home and see my parents. I recalled the best moments of life which I spent with my parents and my friends while being a hostage so that I would not lose hope. Not for a second, did I allow myself to think that I would not be able to return,' Dhyani says. The book also focuses on the pirates and their motivations for choosing that life.
Why piracy?
What were the things he first noticed about them? 'To me, they all looked strikingly similar, except for their different heights. They were extremely skinny, had similar hairdos, yellow-tinted and jaundiced-looking eyes, yellow teeth, and dirty nails. Their lungis and feet were wet because their skiff was tiny…' Dhyani writes in the third chapter of the book. It also talks of the economic crisis of Somalia and that many of its people have taken up arms and gone rogue as a result of economic deprivation. 'It is not right to compare pirates with terrorists, as the pirates were never after our lives,' he says. 'They joined the world of piracy as they were suffering from extreme poverty. The pirates with whom we interacted, were just footsoldiers, and they did this in search of easy money and food. Once they got their ransom, they let us go.'
As the days went by, Dhyani remembers noting other details. 'We spoke with a few of them. There was one pirate who exhibited his pride at being Somalian saying, 'Somalia is a country that accepts all sorts of currencies available in the world'. There was another person who was aware of the complete coastline of West Africa. However, there were others who did not know a single thing beyond their country. I found it all surprising—to see two people sitting together, holding the same guns, chatting, with one aware of many things, and the other, not at all,' notes Dhyani.
Back home with a lesson
After being released, his first thoughts were about his parents and the kind of curiosity that awaited him from people outside his family. Hence, he decided to go to Pilani in Rajasthan to spend time with his close family to avoid unwanted interactions. 'While growing up, I spent a lot of time on the BITS Pilani campus. The place offers a lot of calm and composure. Besides, my extended family (my uncle was a professor at BITS Pilani at that time) was still there. So, I decided to go there as I wanted to stay away from the hustle of metropolitan cities. I was trying to catch up on things. I met my friends and tried to get hold of the changes that occurred in their lives. Later, I went on a vacation with my friends, and after coming back, I hit the restart button. That's when life kicked in,' notes Dhyani.
Although Dhyani does not sail anymore, the incident has taught him the biggest lessons of his life. 'It was a test of my endurance and survival skills. It provided me with a mammoth mental challenge that I overcame. It made me stronger. Every time I get into any difficulty, I remember how I handled those moments with patience and care,' he says.