Jeevan Kiran D’Souza cannot forget the 52 days he spent at gunpoint on hostile, alien waters, at the mercy of ruthless Somali pirates, surviving only on mouldy bread and strictly rationed water. It was stuff that would beat Hollywood pirate stories hands down, says the 28-year-old who recently returned home to virtually a second life in Kerala’s Kasaragod district.

Jeevan, a seaman for the past eight years, had been on the Iranian vessel Iran Deyanat, on the way from China to Holland with a cargo of coal and steel. There were two other Indians with him on board.

Early on August 21, when the ship was moving along the Somalian coast in the Gulf of Aden that separates the horn of Africa from the Arabian peninsula, Jeevan heard loud gunfire. “Many of us ran out on the deck. We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air,” he said.

“There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into a small room, and told the captain to cut the engine.

“By this time, most of us had had a chance to speak with our families over the satellite phone. We knew what was happening: the ship had been hijacked. Soon afterward, the pirates sealed the communications room and, for the rest of their time on board, manned the entrance round the clock.”

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