“Lost in a Hurricane – a man’s chaotic relationship with himself and the ocean into which he chose to to escape into.”
The sail rattled harder on the verge of tearing free from the mast, waves angrily threatened to capsize the boat, a hail of raindrops pounded the windows of the tiny bathroom below decks, and Ishan Roy, aspiring round-the-world sailor, continued to puke his guts out into the toilet.
In the bowl, which now looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, he saw something floating.
“I puked out this massive fly,” Ishan recalls now. “I remember looking at it floating in the shitter and thinking, oh my god, am I hallucinating? I took a stick and started prodding at it to make sure it was real.” He chuckles at the memory—a chuckle almost as familiar to me as my own.
It was 2017, two years after Ishan had graduated from Delhi University with a degree in political science, then decided that, despite having no experience with the sea, he would become the youngest Indian civilian to sail solo around the globe. He was 22 years old, lost in the Indian Ocean on a boat commanded by a man who would not stop berating him for his lack of enterprise and will.
“He was the kind of guy who makes you want to jump out of the boat just to get away from him,” says Ishan.
The trip, Ishan’s first time as a professional sailor out in the ocean, was supposed to be the crucial step in achieving a dream that he had struggled and sacrificed for over many years. All those nights of sleeping alone on beaches, being chewed alive by mosquitoes at 3 a.m., chased by cops at 5 a.m., never knowing if anything was going to work out the way he wanted it to—this voyage from Pondicherry to Goa delivering a speedboat for the Indian Navy was supposed to be the sign that he was on his way to making it.
He would be sailing around 880 nautical miles (just over 1600 kilometres) of open ocean, around southern tip of India and Sri Lanka as a crewmember of the ship and a colleague to those vastly more experienced than him. His goal: to prove to the disapproving old sea dogs who looked at him like he didn’t belong that indeed he did.
Instead, as Ishan’s body purged itself of everything inside, he had the sinking feeling that maybe he wasn’t cut out for this.
***
This is my friend Ishan, self-amused, spontaneous, full of adventure, unfazed at things others might perceive as difficult. To me, he is someone who will always be that impulsive, reckless, short guy with a mop of curly hair and a distinctive mole on his chin, forever grinning and laughing at something silly that might have happened to him the previous day.
Ishan and I had had our fair share of adventures together.
Freshly graduated from school in the summer of 2012, we had sat on many a scorching rooftop, rolled many a joint and listened to almost every Bob Marley track ever written as the oven-like heat radiated over us. We had discussed plans of living out a hippie revolution, inspired by the tales of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, and hoped for our own 21st century version of the Summer of Love.
But of course, life hit us, our paths diverged and so ended this dream to live out a brotherly fantasy of travelling the world, writing, photographing, and adventuring together.
I had assumed it was normal, the world felt too complicated, it was no longer possible to be unique.
But Ishan didn’t think this way.
At 21, as I was wrapping up my last year at Boston University, Ishan was booking a one-way ticket to the Andaman Islands off the Southwest coast of India. He had chosen to discard his bachelor’s degree as one does an old pair of socks.
“That kind of life, the office life, it wasn’t for me.”
It isn't really for anyone.
But while some people conform to fit in within the structures of society, become a part of the pyramid, a building block that is part of something much larger than itself, Ishan had felt a calling for something else.
He wanted to become the youngest Indian civilian to sail around the world solo.
***
In 2012, Laura Dekker, a New Zealand-born Dutch sailor had become the youngest person ever to sail around the world solo.
Her circumnavigation began in Gibraltar in August 2010 and ended in Saint Maarten in 2012. Her journey has been well documented and turned out to be what inspired Ishan into chasing sailing dream.
But Dekker was born on a boat and sailed solo for the first time at the tender age of 6.[i] Ishan’s only experience with the ocean was like any other middle-class child’s growing up in India, a holiday in Goa.
“My connection to the water was nothing more than that a sixth-grade kid would have jumping in with a boogie board.”
Sailing was in Laura’s blood; it wasn’t in Ishan’s.
When Ishan booked his ticket out of Delhi, he didn’t feel fear or anxiety. He had felt this bitterness, a disdain for what he saw around him that drove him to escape into the welcoming arms of the ocean.
“I don’t want to romanticize the moment,” he says. “I just didn’t want to live life on other people’s terms. I was being selfish; I didn’t have a spiritual awakening. I just wanted to leave.”
Despite the palpable frustration I feel in Ishan’s description of what it was that he saw in society that led him to discard it, there is a simplicity to his voice, which personifies his decision-making ability. To him, casting aside that university degree to pursue a life on the fringes, to chase a dream that could potentially have deadly consequences was a decision as easy as what brewing a cup of tea might be to someone else.
I had encountered this side of him before.
Despite being as thick as thieves during our mid-teens, I had always known that I carried a feeling of envy towards Ishan. I felt a resentment towards how cavalier he could be with other people’s feelings as much he was towards his own.
Peer pressure as a concept never existed in his eyes. If he wanted something from you, chances are he would get it. He truly embodied the philosophy of “I will never ask you to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”
In another life, perhaps Ishan would’ve made a great military leader.
***
One sunny winter’s day in 2011, I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I felt my heart sink as I read the caller ID - ‘Jojo.’
“What’s up?” the familiar voice rang through from the other side.
“Just heading home,” I replied.
“Dude, fuck that. Let’s get drunk.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine. I had never done that before. I felt a creeping uneasiness develop at the thought of what would happen should my parents find out. But this anxiety was overpowered out by excitement at finding solace in rebelling, and the forceful, compelling tone of Ishan’s voice.
An hour or so later, we were standing at an unassuming liquor store – “thekas” as they're known locally – steel shutters overhead that worked both as a roof and when pulled down, the gate. Around us were a few stragglers; watchmen, taxi drivers just done with a graveyard shift, hoping to find some peace at the bottom of a bottle. Age had battered the faces of the men around us, each wrinkle, each pockmark symbolizing a battle won in the daily struggle to be alive.
Ishan and I, fresh-faced, wide eyed wearing vibrant pressed clothes had no business being there. I felt the energy around me and began to shrink, but Ishan stood tall, brash, and self-confident in his convictions.
“Give us 6 beers, one bottle of white rum, and one bottle of black rum,” he commanded at the man standing behind the counter.
This was it the moment of truth, could two 16-year-olds hustle their way in and out of a theka without being questioned, pulled up and thrown in jail for a night?
Without any hesitation, the man behind the counter handed us what we wanted as we traded multiple hundred-rupee notes to him. We had asked, he had provided; what we did was not his responsibility. As far as he was concerned, we were of legal drinking age.
Filled with a type of excitement and adrenaline that only doing something you're not supposed to can bring, we found a park sandwiched between two residential building blocks. Unaware of our surroundings, we cracked open the bottles and began draining them with the boldness that only youth and ignorance can bring. Residents – respectable, measured, hard-working in nature – looked on with disgust at the drunken young men and the tornadoes of chaos they seemed to create with every step they took.
I remember moments of blackness filtered with flashes of light as we stumbled into a marketplace. I remember toppling over tray of fried chicken as I struggled up a flight of stairs, laughing uncontrollably and getting kicked out of the restaurant. I have a faint memory of the smashing headfirst into a wall and then rolling onto the floor.
People walked right over me without a second thought, as I lay on the sidewalk, hopelessly immobilized disgusted at the sight of this inconvenient obstacle in their way.
All the while, Ishan had been on his own adventure, making his way to the next bar, without a care in the world, having completely forgotten I was with him, and that perhaps I might have needed help.
He had been drinking to forget. Heartbroken, having been left by the girl of his dreams, he had done what countless others do when they feel a surge of pain. He had run away from it.
I was nothing more than collateral damage, a willing companion, an afterthought.
He would’ve done it anyway.
I emerged relatively unscathed, but the pain I felt manifested itself in a resentment towards Ishan and his devilish ways. Somewhere over the years, my perception of Ishan transformed from this impulsive, fun-loving friend to a rowdy, careless, selfish man that trampled over others without a second though; perhaps we weren’t meant to live out of brotherly fantasy together after all.
***
After graduating university in 2015, Ishan spent four months in the Andamans, first learning and then teaching scuba diving. He explains that diving was a smart way to get used to the water. But he began to get itchy feet again, a restlessness that comes from staying still too long, a feeling that not even the peace of the ocean could eradicate. And just like that he left for Pondicherry to work with two master craftsmen that built and sold all types of boats for the Indian Navy.
“Pondy Nautic” – which has since closed – organized tours of the backwaters for visitors. Ishan spent his time with the owners here, working on building sailboats in his downtime, and taking tourists out in the backwaters when he was on the clock.
In the off season, he showed up every single day at the sailing club, 11 in the morning, spent the first hour rigging up the boat on his own and take it out, each day going a little further. Pushing the boundaries – the physical ones limiting the boat’s route, and his own – felt liberating. He felt free, and powerful, what he left behind on the harbour each morning didn’t matter to him.
This adrenaline-fueled adventure took him past the demarcated harbour lines one sunny day.
He rigged up the 14-foot catamaran, which he was so used to sailing and kicked off from the harbour. As he sailed to the edge of the backwater boundary, he felt a pull. It was an impulse that might cause many to turn back, but that speed-freaks, rock climbers, mountaineers are all very familiar with. It was an urge to keep going. And so, he did. Immediately, he felt the ocean turn against him, the waves became choppier, the wind picked up speed. It felt as though the water was turning against him, telling him that he didn’t belong there.
“I got into trouble for it, of course,” he says. I can hear him grinning as he speaks. “I had gotten really bored of doing the same thing everyday, I decided I should just head out into the open seas.”
Despite almost capsizing multiple times and feeling as though he had been run over by a train when he disembarked on the jetty having finally steered the boat back, Ishan was hooked. He says that he felt a sense of freedom that day like he had never experienced before.
“That was the moment it hit me. You have land on one side, the open ocean, and the horizon on the other, and you’re like holy shit, there’s another world out there that you’re completely impervious to.”
It was this feeling that he wanted to chase, but circumstances outside his control saw him become homeless. He had gotten sick of the chaos and disturbed energy that the troubled couple he lived with gave off. He left and chose the life of a homeless hippie. He felt further validated in his approach to life: “self-reliance was the key to happiness.”
“I said fuck it, I moved to the harbour and stayed there, hopping between the jetty and the beach for about a month.”
He found being alone on land much harder than navigating the open ocean. Being chased by police night after night became exhausting, and if he did manage to evade them, mosquitoes and sandflies butchered him through the night. His only solace came in the ocean.
“You couldn’t really sleep till about 4 in the morning, but at 5 the waves would rip, so I’d jump on my surfboard and hit the ocean.”
One sunny day in Pondicherry Ishan’s phone ran; it was lady luck on the line. There was a need for a crew member in helping bring a 39-foot catamaran from the port in Bombay (Mumbai) to the Andamans. This was his moment. It was here where Ishan first began learning what it would be like to live at sea.
The graduation to a 40-foot boat from the 15-feet ones that he was used to was going to be tough, but for six months Ishan worked closely with a yacht master, prepping the boat to leave the port every day. But they never received the green light, and Ishan was left with a Grand Canyon-sized chasm of disappointment.
***
Cyclone Ockhi continued to batter the side of the boat. The crew was convinced that the cyclone had only one mission that night: to capsize and drown them all. They needed all hands on deck to keep the boat centred.
Superstitions ran amok; this was God’s way of saying to the crew that a new member to the small team wasn’t a good idea.
For Ishan, the cyclone outside felt like a manifestation of the storm inside him. His guts were churning, crying out for some respite from the incessant rocking. He knew he had to help his colleague, but he could not stop himself from vomiting.
Had he been living a pipe dream? Was he really cut out for this life?
The night wore on and when Ishan had nothing else in his system, he emerged from the toilet.
The storm broke off. It was as if the cosmos had been playing a dirty, dark game with Ishan’s mind to test him. Almost instantly it felt as though the gale-like winds fell to a gentle breeze. The bullet-sized raindrops transformed into a soothing drizzle. The aggressive, antagonistic waves became welcoming, embracing ones.
Ignoring the harsh scowls on the faces of his crewmembers, Ishan stood on the front deck and felt a calming, soothing energy. He stared into the distance and saw something that he claims caused a rebirth.
“I saw the sky, and I was blown away,” he says.
He was greeted by a violet sky with faint patches of grey scattered across as though Van Gogh himself had painted it. In the distance he saw a twinkle as the sky cleared, and suddenly an orchestra of stars played a tune in the sky that brought both a tear to his eye and a smile on his face.
“This was what our ancestors had seen. You’re out there deep in the ocean, no light pollution around you, you feel free, you're almost intimidated by the vastness of what’s around you. And what’s around you belongs to no country, it’s clear, it’s everything, it’s whatever you want it to be.”
It was in that moment where everything felt worth it again. He would fight for his dream till the very end if he had to.
***
The clock had just struck past midnight. The biting, cold of the Delhi winter air stung particularly hard on this late night in 2018. I stubbed my cigarette and waited for Ishan to finish his. He balanced the cigarette between his index and middle finger and held on to a glass of Old Monk and coke – a classic Delhi winter cocktail – as he rambled on. We were standing on the balcony, the only light coming from the room next door, fighting with the shadow that shrouded the right side of Ishan’s face. I rolled my eyes and feigned interest, anxious to get back in.
I had felt as though I had heard it all before, the “I have a new appreciation for life,” the “I don’t fear death.” It was as if he was narrating to me every line from the book of cliches.
It felt like a classic Ishan story. Full of hyperbole, without any real substance. What I failed to internalize in this story, was that despite the eccentric, erratic way his thoughts and sentences formed, Ishan was telling me the story of his life, and I was ignoring it.
***
Ishan was in South Africa, a year after his semi-disastrous, strangely cathartic voyage from Pondicherry to Goa. He had since been on several sailing trips around the South Indian coast, but now South Africa posed a different challenge.
He was here to get his skipper’s license[ii]. He was here to become a yacht master. He was here to prove himself. The certificate he would receive would allow him to officially skipper a boat over 9 metres (~30 feet).
The examination process was rigorous and required Ishan and his fellow crewmembers to sail from South Africa to Madagascar via the Cape of Good Hope.
A simple Google search of the area brings up articles about the dangers of the route. It used to be known as the “Cape of Storms,” but its name was changed to draw more tourists to the area[iii]. The area is famed for its shipwrecks[iv], with notorious cross winds and currents formed by the intersection of the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean creating waves the size of skyscrapers. Legend has it that the tale of the Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever had its birth here, having been lost in a storm, centuries ago[v].
The convergence of cold and warm currents creates unpredictable waters[vi]. Weather reports were no good here.
“A challenge was a mild way of putting it.”
The boat was manned by a crew made up of only students, with the examiner there to simply oversee the operation. In Ishan’s company were students with great experience, racers, solo sailors, a group that had clocked almost a million nautical miles when combined.
“It was about 17 or 18 days of pure hell.” Ishan recounts the tale. “We sailed for 42 days straight, but I can hardly remember the days other than the storm.”
Waves the size of fifteen story building rose and fell next to them. Thunderstorms raged as though they were conjured by the Greek God Zeus himself. There was no time to think, the work on the boat was constant and relentless. Bracing the foreyard took the 4 pairs of hands and 24-hour surveillance. The man overseeing the examination, a veteran sailor who was meant to stay objective in his role as an examiner had to abandon his post and provide support to prevent the boat from capsizing.
Ishan describes being washed over by water so frigid he couldn’t feel any inch of his body. His hands had swollen up to twice their size from the cold, the numbness, and the incessant pressure he had put on them, pulling ropes, steering, and simply hanging on for dear life. Winds ripped through his skin from all directions, tearing buttons from his shirt, cutting the delicate skin on his face open and splitting holes in the sail that valiantly continued to fly high, but that Ishan knew was on its last leg of life. The boat being dual powered, the crew had to ensure that any water soaking the engine, had to be removed. Teams worked in shifts, switching posts simply so they could use a different set of muscles to prevent atrophy and loss. Meals were sacrificed for small bite-sized portions of energy-fuel food, granola bars, fruits, nuts, dried meat, anything that could be eaten on the fly.
“We were all lucky to still be alive and in one piece after that storm.”
Land felt heavenly when they finally did arrive in Madagascar. They had survived by the skin of their teeth, wits barely intact. The examiner, who had himself sailed over 500,000 nautical miles in his life, had told them that this was the worst storm he had ever experienced.
Passing them for the certification was a foregone conclusion, but first was a celebration of life.
His crewmembers weren’t friends, they weren’t family, they had become much more. There was a fraternal bond that had developed between them during those endless days battling a storm far greater in strength than them. It was a feeling that army veterans experience that pull them back into a war that could take their life the very next day. It was a tribal sensation, a community bond that we might have lost in this modern society obsessed with progress.
As Ishan lay on the ground, clutching the combination of grass, mud, rocks, and any small critters that had made that patch of dirt home, he felt the sun beat down on his skin for the first time in what felt like an eternity. It was as though the harder he held onto earth, the harder he held on to his own life. Each breath he took was slow, deep, and measured, every one of which added an extra second, an extra minute, an extra day to his life.
A crew member that had dealt with addiction troubles his whole life, ran into town, and came back with 6 crates of beer and 2 cartons of cigarettes.
The trauma that had scarred them was going to take some work getting over.
***
I turn the video sharing on.
After two long hours of speaking with him through the “audio-only,” feature, I had to see his face.
I had already known what was going to greet me.
Ishan was so stoned that his eyelids fought to stay open. Heavy, sagging dark circles lay under. His eyes were bright, as bright as they had always been. A big, goofy grin cut right across his face and mine. The formality of the interview was over; we could be friends again. And it was this friendship that allowed me to ask him my final question, a question about his dad who he lost when he was young. I could feel the tension in my body as the words left my mouth, and for the first time, I could feel Ishan embrace a seriousness that I hadn’t seen or heard yet, despite all his stories of his own dances with death.
“Life became fleeting for me after my dad died. One day, out of the blue he was gone, and it hit me like a truck. Everything can be taken away from you in one, cruel, insignificant second.”
He tells me that he set out to live his life to its absolute maximum ever since.
“Smoke the cigarette right down to its filter,” he chuckles.
Too many people have made this oath to themselves, and many more are quick to share this with their peers. There are terms for this – “YOLO,” – and memes both serious and ironic that have plagued social media and seeped its way into our lives against our better judgment.
At a time when ordinary life is celebrated as extraordinary and achieving the extraordinary becomes more extreme and closer to impossible, Ishan reminds me that there is a beauty to life that can be found in its simplicity.
The Ishan I used to know was selfish; he wanted to be remembered, he wanted to go down in the history books as the youngest, Indian civilian to circumnavigate the world on his own. He wanted to achieve the extraordinary.
Now there’s a more mature, calm head in front of me. He recognizes that the small wins matter just as much, if not more than the impossible dreams. He’s content with where he is, arguably even at peace. Sailing is still a huge part of his life, and as long as he can do that, he’s happy to keep chugging on out on the fringes.
[i]https://archive.vn/20120124021357/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/youngest-sailor-to-complete-solo-trip-around-the-world/article2310517/
[ii]https://www.sailing.org.za/s-v-c/skippertickets/
[iii]https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145476/the-cape-of-good-hope
[iv]https://capepoint.co.za/cape-of-storms/
[v] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145476/the-cape-of-good-hope
[vi] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/89535/the-treacherous-and-productive-seas-of-southern-africa