Latest news with #Hijacked
The Hindu
25-07-2025
- General
- The Hindu
Interview with Pralav Dhyani, author of Hijacked
Pralav Dhyani was a 21-year-old cadet on his first sea duty on board the cargo ship MVRAK Afrikanawhen it was hijacked off the Horn of Africa by Somali pirates in 2010. Together with 23 shipmates, he was held hostage on board the ship in Somali waters before being ransomed 331 days later. It was a harrowing time, during which their redoubtable Captain nearly died of a stroke, and the ship's chief cook expired closer to their release. Dhyani recounts the ordeal in his book Hijacked (HarperCollins). Excerpts from an interview: Question: What inspired you to write this book so long after the event? Answer: During the COVID-19 lockdown, I noticed how many people were frustrated about staying indoors, even though it was for their own safety. What struck me was how little we appreciated the peace and rejuvenation that can exist within four walls. Despite the restrictions, we still had access to our families, loved ones, and the freedom to connect. It was a very different kind of lockdown I experienced in 2010 where isolation wasn't a choice, and freedom was truly out of reach. That is when I decided this survival story needs to be shared. Q: Clearly, you and others were held together by the courage and wisdom of your captain. Could you have survived the ordeal without him? A: The phrase 'With great power comes great responsibility' has stayed with me ever since I first heard it in 2002, watching Spider Man for the first time. During the 11 months starting April 2010, our captain embodied that principle better than anyone I've ever known. It was humbling and deeply moving to witness someone burdened with immense responsibility, carrying the weight of his own worries and a family waiting for him back home, placing the safety and survival of his team above himself. It wasn't just leadership; it was selflessness in its truest form. That kind of leadership leaves a mark that no words can fully capture. Q: How did you cope with a long incarceration seemingly without end? A: At the time, it was deeply disheartening and frustrating. Time slows down in the worst way. There was no clear timeline, no certainty, and that made it all the more difficult. But in the midst of that darkness, I realised how powerful hope can be. When it's combined with positive thoughts, it gives you the strength to endure. Survival, I've learned, isn't always loud or dramatic —sometimes, it's just quietly holding on, one moment at a time. Q: How do you rate your rescue by the Italian Navy? A: They were truly our saviours — without a doubt. But even they had protocols to follow. When we established radio communication with them, one of their first questions was whether we were in a position to self-abandon the ship. They did everything they could, in the safest and most secure way possible, to get us onboard their warship. Ultimately, the only way off a disabledRAKAfrikanawas through our own life rafts. The rescue had to be quick and safe from the moment we abandoned our ship. Q: Are you haunted by your experience? A: To be honest, no. Back then, yes, I was terrified every time a gun was put to my head and let's be real, if it ever happened again (God forbid), I'd probably feel the same. I made a conscious choice to only share the humorous side of the experience. And maybe that's what helped me move on, by turning the trauma into something lighter, something survivable. That's what helped me sail away from those memories. Q: Your book is forgiving to all, including the pirates. Were you always so forgiving? A: I believe that with time, and having lived through and overcome so much, I've become more forgiving. If you had asked me this in 2012 or 2013, my answer might have been very different — maybe more aggressive. But now, I see life as a series of challenges we must face and overcome to survive and grow. Life isn't meant to be perfect, and perhaps it shouldn't be, because perfection can lead us to take things for granted. Those 331 days taught me patience and calm — and that's what I carry with me the most from that experience. Q: Did you sail again after your release? A: I never returned to sailing after coming home in 2011. Building a career in the maritime industry after quitting sailing at such an early stage presented its own unique challenges. In 2017, I founded ARC Continental FZE, which focuses on commercial and ship management aspects of maritime vessels. Hijacked Pralav Dhyani HarperCollins ₹399 The writer teaches public policy and contemporary history at IISc-Bengaluru.
Mint
05-05-2025
- Mint
Facing a Somali pirate's gun on a hijacked ship
On 11 April 2010, Pralav Dhyani was a trainee deck officer on a cargo merchant vessel, looking forward to an exciting career at sea. But little did he anticipate the chaos that befell his life in a few hours. Later that day, armed pirates forcefully boarded the ship off the coast of Africa and took the crew hostage. For the following 331 days, the small group of men who had come from different countries to work on the ship were held captive in Somalia. As the negotiations for their release went on, the prisoners suffered mock executions, mental torture, terror and betrayal. It was the toughest initiation into a life at sea that Dhyani could have expected. In Hijacked , his recently published memoir, he tells the story. The excerpt below captures a vignette from Dhyani's life in captivity. We had just finished our cargo operations in the beautiful island country of Seychelles and were heading to Zanzibar, where my senior cadets were about to sign off and go back home, and new cadets were about to sign on. This would make me and my two batchmates, Shikhar (whom we called 'SK') and Anubhav ('Bade'), senior cadets. I also had a nickname, 'Bonge', but more on that later. We were excited, because being a senior cadet comes with its own perks—think of it like being a final-year student in college. But what we got instead was a situation in which the entire crew of the ship was consigned to the position of junior cadets. Also read: The unknown lives of young Indian freedom fighters Our main engine chose the worst possible part of the ocean to break down, right off the coast of Seychelles, and soon, three or four gun-toting Somali pirates took over our ship. They made us steer it to within a few nautical miles from the coast of Somalia, where we were ordered to drop anchor. In captivity, one spends a lot of time thinking about death. There was fear of having a gun pointed at me, with the threat of the trigger being pulled at any moment. There was still hope that I wouldn't get to experience the feeling. But I did experience it—two months after the hijacking. I stood on the deck, my hands in the air, as one of the pirates pointed an AK-47 right at my forehead, the tip of the barrel barely an inch from my skin. My heart was beating faster than ever; I was shitting bricks as I waited for my brains to leak out of the imminent gunshot wound. In the movies, when someone is about to die, their life flashes in front of their eyes. But when the gun was an inch from my forehead, my mind went blank, waiting for the pirate's next move. My life depended on that one-dollar bullet in his gun. How do I know the price? Because after I returned from captivity, I worked for a company providing maritime security guards to ships navigating the waters that I had been unable to cross safely. A one-dollar bullet was all that was needed to end everything for a person and their family. I looked at the pirate holding the gun. This one always reeked of something other than just tobacco, which meant that we could always smell him before we saw him. The tops of his cigarette packs were always torn, presumably to make roaches. He was a six-foot-tall, skinny, bald, older man with a white goatee, always dressed in shorts or three-quarters, and usually with a bed sheet wrapped around him like a shawl. His teeth were yellow, and one of them was chipped. Even his eyes were yellow, as if he had jaundice. He had an elongated, V-shaped face with a pronounced jawline, because of which we had nicknamed him 'Jafar', after the villain in Disney's Aladdin . He tried hard to be intimidating, though he didn't need to, because he had the gun in his hands. Jafar had been around from the time we had anchored in Somali waters, but we hadn't interacted with him much, compared to the other pirates. He and the others were always eating 'khat', a plant that looked indistinguishable from any other. We wondered why human beings would eat jungle grass like that, and each of us had our own theories about why they loved it so much. Someone said it was good for their sex life and libido, but then we wondered why they were having it on the ship, miles away from their partners. The logical reason was that it gave them a high. Much later, I found out that khat is indeed a stimulant that makes one more alert and energetic, and causes loss of appetite and euphoria, so it helped the pirates stay up during their long hours of keeping watch. It is banned in most countries, but the Somalis seemed to have it incessantly. They wouldn't even wash it before eating, and ate it along with all the dirt it was covered in. Out of curiosity, I once tried it while sitting with the pirates, but just couldn't take the taste after a point. SK and Bade kept asking if something was happening, but nothing did. We came to the conclusion that maybe we needed to have it like the Somalis—chewing it for hours and washing it down with extremely sweetened milk and tea. Maybe that was the key, but we really did not have the patience to sit and eat grass like goats. Excerpted with permission from HarperCollins India from Hijacked: A True Story of Surviving 331 Days with Somali Pirates , by Pralav Dhyani. Also read: 4 new titles to read this summer
