In Solitude, Where I am Least Alone

When the nation-wide lockdown was announced in response to COVID 19 I was acutely aware that even if the logistics of providing for 1.3 billion people in their homes could be managed there would still remain the problem of mental health because many were wading into unfamiliar territory. Not so for me, nor for any of my colleagues in the Navy who are regularly sequestered in metal ships and submarines for weeks. Perhaps there are huge lessons to be learnt in how we deal with isolation and the kind of individuals we will be when we come out of it. 

 

In the February of 2010 I landed on an island of twenty square kilometres with a population of two, no roads and a topography so ravaged by winds that trees refused to take root. As we taxied, a sign-board announced its name in red- Bleaker Island- making me wonder if it had anything to do with the isolation suffered by its inhabitants. A year later I was to spend twenty five days in a sail boat cloistered with another soul as we made our way from Rio to Cape Town. I had a first hand experience of the peculiar loneliness that one feels in the company of another, the loneliness that comes from running out of things to talk about.

 

At Cape Town I dropped off my crew, made a pilgrimage to Robben Eiland where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for eighteen years and as winter approached we set sail for Goa. It was the middle of the year and I was alone in my little boat. An easterly breeze helped us at the outset but when the Cape of Good Hope was rounded it freshened into a gale trying to push us back, with the help of the Agulhas current, into the Atlantic. The air was made bleaker by its dampness but what exacerbated my condition were the problems that beset us. The gale shredded a sail and a batten cut lose and made its way into the sea. I lost both of them forever. The generator and autopilot too went on strike. The days got bleaker as they passed and I struggled between my duties as lookout, cook, navigator, sail trimmer and  a quartermaster rendered sleepless without a functional autopilot. It did not help either that I was afflicted with nausea with my stomach trying to find a solution to the multi dimensional problem of sea sickness by retching. Those four days had broken me mentally and I wasn’t sure if I could carry on for another thirty days and make it to India. Everything all around was going wrong and I was angry and desperate because a lot hinged on the outcome of this voyage. 

 

Something had to be done. It was important that I set my own house in order first so that I could perceive things as they were. I set about chanting dispassionate sounds with a solemn voice over the next two days till the mind slowed and eventually stopped reacting to outside cues. I could decide what to feel, and I decided to feel peaceful. As if on cue, the storm outside stopped being stormy and despair was replaced by a stoic resolve that comes after a glimpse of the profound. It had now become simpler to be where I was, which was the present, and continue to remain there until I reached where I had to be. This transition from loneliness to solitude was a seminal experience that I built upon till it was time for the big voyage of 2012.

 

On the 1st of November that year, my life turned a chapter. The Indian Navy  was about to help me realise my childhood dream of sailing around the world. I was casting off to be more alone than any other Indian had ever been and for even longer than one’s imagination would permit. I was to be so alone that it was akin to draining this country of all its people, land, roads, buildings, rivers, forests and everything conceivable and to stand in its geographic centre dealing with a biweekly ration of cyclones. It would be bleaker than Bleaker, and even more remote. It was to be solitary confinement, with the exception that I had not only volunteered but also was looking forward to it, and it was with profound relief that I let go of the lines that tied my boat to the shore and sailed out into a cyclone that waited outside the harbour. Unlike the previous instance, I was better prepared this time.

 

In the next five months I sailed around the world alone. The voyage itself was well documented in blogs and media. People noticed the equatorial heat, the fickleness of doldrums, the certainty of trade winds and the magnificent Great Capes of the Southern Hemisphere. The vicious gales of the Southern Ocean reminded them of the age old adage that there were no rules south of the forties, no laws south of the fifties and no gods south of the sixties. They saw how the boat and I were battered by storms and calmed by lulls, how we were chased by whales and dolphins and albatross, how in the tropics flying fish would kill themselves by flying into the boat and how I survived on rain water after diesel mixed with drinking water. They met the people I met - the sailor off Isla de los Estates on Erica XII, the pilot onboard an RAF Hercules close to Bleaker Island and the Chinese watchkeeper of MOL Distinction in the trade winds. And when I arrived, they saw the grand reception that the Navy had arranged at the Gateway of India, and how the story of the voyage was recounted. What they did not see though, was the mind that emerged after being subject to such solitude.

 

Pointers of what was to become of me at the end of the isolation emerged within a month. The first week was spent in forgetting land- both its trappings and the exhaustion one carries from having to ready a boat- as you realise that you have become a little self sustaining planet.  I had also lost the sense of time because there no longer existed a need to synchronise mundane chores to the convenience of others but this I regained by the second week. By the third week I realised that I wasn’t dressing to conform to an image, or to an occasion, but to what was necessitated by convenience and that made clothing optional. It took me four weeks to see the freedom that came from not having to form opinions, of having to worry about the opinions of others and of the constant necessity to impress someone else, or outthink and out manoeuvre them.  

 

The storms began as soon as we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn which coincided with the first appearance of the brown albatross. The first storm, which seemed like the gale at the Cape of Good Hope, shook me. Powerful winds heaped mountains of water on us but it was not the force of the passing storm that made me afraid but the memory of the previous one. I got used to this, because once you understand that fear is a projection of your mind it can be controlled and experienced in the manner you want. Even without that understanding, it is the faculty of human mind that it can endure what it can’t change. The mind, in that world devoid of stimulations where everything was the same every day, learnt that forgetfulness was a powerful and natural ally. I could no longer remember what yesterday was like, or the day before or any other day right until the first day of the voyage, and whatever memories I had were fragmented without time stamps or had to be recalled from a written journal. I, for one, existed only at that moment. The mind that was unstimulated by the outside environment turned inwards and becomes reflective. Life’s philosophical questions that need long periods of contemplation are best engaged in such uninterrupted solitude. In the absence of society, products of belief systems broke down. In the absence of transaction, money lost its meaning. In the absence of society hierarchy broke down. There was no way of determining one’s position in the order of things and, therefore, death, which in a way of speaking is a cessation of relationships, became non-existent. Without death, the conventional idea of god necessitated a replacement. When one hasn’t spoken at all, one has stopped lying and, by extension, one becomes sinless in solitude because there hasn’t been anyone to sin against. Without sin there was no guilt, and without guilt and conversation I started to see things as they were because my highest and only moral obligation was to be truthful to myself. That is how I lived for five months. It was in that time without the burden of memory or expectations that I was free.

 

 We celebrated two New Year’s Eves as we crossed the International Date Line, rounded Cape Horn on 26th of January 2013, crossed the Prime Meridian on Valentine’s Day, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in a storm, dodged a cyclone off Madagascar, sailed past Mauritius on their National Day, ran out of water before Syechelles, recrossed the Equator on the day of March equinox and were back in Mumbai on Easter Sunday. There was a tremendous reception arranged by the Navy at the Gateway of India as thousands gathered and the President of India flew down to mark the end of the voyage. 

 

 It was interesting to be thrown among people. Was it a coincidence that I re read “Moby Dick” about that time and my attention was drawn to these lines : “Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is - which was the only way he could get there - thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease; preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always equal to himself. Surely his was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that.”

 

  

 

 

The Resurrection of Dragonflies

By the time we were on the throes of crossing the Equator for the second time the sea had undergone a metamorphosis: the youthful, inquisitive and godless ocean of the south had grown older, wiser and bored in these latitudes, its faith reaffirmed by the repetitive act of washing the shores of the land of a million deities. The reversal continued unabated in all manners and it was never more evident than when the dragonflies came to life on their own as if by an act of resurrection in the latitude of my grandfather's home much before it was Easter Sunday. I also deferred clearing the mess in the boat more out of deference to the evident display of the reversal of entropy with full faith in the ability of things to find their own way back into order. 

The voyage continued on expected lines and I was greeted by light to moderate head winds that forced us to plough eastward toward the Maldivian Islands south of the Equator and then towards Socotra, Istanbul and Gwadar north of it. The continued trouble with water meant that I had to sail a fast course towards Mumbai eventually bringing my solitary existence to an early end. I would avoid working my body by day to conserve whatever fluids there were within it and plan all work, including tacking and working the sails, for the night. Water would be measured out to the millilitre to avoid wastage and I could not but help sympathise with the millions of farmers and housewives all over the world and their condition during droughts. In the evening of 31 March when I crossed the first set of buoys while entering the harbour of Mumbai I had so well succeeded in my endeavour at conservation that I was still left with two bottles of water.  But then even if the voyage had extended beyond that date, I had imagined a contraption comprising the pressure cooker and some plumbing to distill water out of the sea and continue on the voyage for as long as cooking gas lasted. 

A vessel at harbour mouth

First sighting of land after Staten Island

It was evening by the time I arrived at the outskirts of the harbour. A cruise ship was headed out with promises of dolphin sightings and a naval helicopter buzzed about me to take pictures of the last moments of the voyage. The exhilaration of entering our names into the history books was also diluted with the sadness that comes when good things come to an end, but then the latter feeling had been the more overpowering of the two because I had not set out to create a record or bring back a trophy but rather for the experience of it all. In the last one hundred and fifty days I had fallen in love with the sea and with the boat that had carried me around the globe whose portholes offered me a window seat view of the most magnificent and life like motion picture I would ever see in my life. It had been a most interesting voyage, one that was not undertaken alone but in the company of hibernating grasshoppers and dragonflies, curious whales and smiling dolphins, loyal albatrosses and even more loyal fans. We had happily dealt with the absence of a chopping board, the inquisitiveness of Sri Lankan fishermen, the death and resurrection of dragonflies, suicidal flying fish, bone chilling cold, ghost icebergs, foggy sunless months, the terror of land sightings, solitary human voices in the middle of the ocean, hallucinatory dreams, desiccating heat and come back to tell exaggerated tales of it all.

By the time I crossed my office building by the harbour, night had already fallen. Cdr Donde came out to greet us in an inflatable along with Ratnakar and Alam and other colleagues from the office, one of whom carried popcorn and chilled soft drinks. An hour after crossing the first set of buoys I had entered the naval dockyard and tied the boat alongside a warship where almost all the admirals and other senior officers of the command had gathered to witness the event. It had been a low key affair because it was not yet time to tell the world about my arrival. It was, therefore, not marked by cannonading gun salutes, parading military columns or dancing girls but by the popping of two champagne bottles, many warm hugs and two men in white uniforms steadying my wobbly sealegs with firm helping hands. One of them had been the C-in-C of the Western Naval Command, Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, who had seen me off exactly 150 days earlier at the Gateway of India. He proudly remarked, " You have turned geography into history. Very warm congratulations."

Another round of private celebrations continued on the boat with three cans of beer that had inadvertently gone around the world and pizza that came from our host ship. It lasted well into the next day until we abandoned the gathering because the hosts had run out of beer at the unearthly hour of 1 o'clock in the morning. It was only after I stepped on land proper, travelled in a non wind driven device, deposited myself in a firm bed inside a concrete room and switched on the air-conditioning that I finally understood that from now on I would have to live a life in concrete buildings among landlubbers whose language I had forgotten.

That was how the solo voyage around the world had come to an end with a resurrection on the Easter Sunday of the 31st of March followed by the first step on land on All Fool's Day on the 1st of April. For six days after Easter Sunday I moved about men in disguise and passed time getting my passport stamped, devouring raw fruits and vegetables, giving interviews as if I was still at sea, appearing suddenly in front of colleagues who had given me up for dead (or at least someone who had been forced to cross over to the other side of the world) and confusing online fans with misleading reports because an element of surprise had to be maintained till 6th of April when the President of India and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces would come to accord a "ceremonial reception" to the skipper and boat. The ploy seemed to have worked well because on the 5th of April when Guo Chuan, the Chinese circumnavigator, entered Qingdao with his boat the international media thought that the Mhadei and skipper were still at sea and becalmed. I had a mail from Sir Robin warning me to clear the confusion and I promptly posted a picture of my stamped passport on the Facebook page of the boat to prove my arrival on the 31st of March. 

I had been looking forward to spending the six days that intervened the actual arrival and the official reception because it would offer a gradual acclimatisation  into the world of landlubbers. But even by the 6th of April I had not let go of the sea within because I refused to find sleep without the lullaby of the boat's rolling or eat without the freedom to gulp the vast open seas and sea winds or drink water without the smell of diesel in it or urinate without seeing the width of half an ocean at my feet. I also realised that I had left a big part of myself at sea which was confirmed by the weighing scale at 11 kilos. In between the chaos of interviews I found the time to make a five minute short video along with a couple of friends with highlights on the voyage, accept an ring of gold from a fan for rounding the Horn and buy accessories for my new MacBook. It was a delightful experience to move about the sea of humanity that was Mumbai and watch everything about me as if it were a movie that would never get over. That was the kind of solitude and sense of detachment that I had felt even amongst people. 

I was only too happy when the 6th of April finally arrived because here was my  last chance to sail solo for the last time for I was certain that after I would leave the helm it would need the efforts of an entire crew to keep her sailing even from coast to coast. We cast off before the sun was up and disappeared beyond the limits of harbour to hold a position to its south. In the light breeze I put the boat into the wind, had a hearty breakfast of fresh fruits, cleaned the toilet, showered, dried myself in the open and instinctively went off to sleep. It was such a delightful day off Mandva away from the cacophony of all sorts of calls and noises that I lost track of time as is the won't in a solitary existence and I refused to head towards the notional finish line off the Gateway of India for the same reason that I had set out on the circumnavigation. An immense array of sailboats had gathered to sail me in which included Major AK Singh of the Trishna fame who had been awarded a Kirti Chakra for his efforts to skipper her around the world on a crewed voyage with many stops years ago. By the time I was knocked back into my senses I had to push the throttle all the way forward and it had become increasingly difficult for the yatchs and dinghies to keep pace with the Mhadei. The boat and I finally crossed the finish line at the appointed time three hours after noon which was followed by an overhead flypast by the President of India in an Air Force Mi-8. Fifteen minutes later when I was mooring the Mhadei alongside a pontoon at the Gateway of India, the President had already taken his post under the monument along with the Governor of Maharashtra, the Chief of Naval Staff and the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command. I marched up to him wearing a white tee shirt, blue jeans and red shoes to make report completion of the voyage. In reply he wore a happy and proud face and welcomed me ashore on behalf of the 1.2 billion people of India. 

All Yours! The video that we put together while I lived in purgatory. 

Next up- Life on Land