Love Lasts Forever (8 page)

11. A month in captivity

July
2011, Somewhere in Somalia

Happiest man, my foot!

Well
, if you want to know how to dig your own grave, you know whom to ask.

I can’t believe that I actually convinced everybody for my marriage The question has been ringing in my head again and again
, and I can’t believe I actually did that. No one wanted us to get married so soon, not even Aisha. I should have at least enjoyed a few more years of my bachelor hood, and then, who knows the relationship would have fizzled out on its own. That has to be the biggest irony of my life.

             
My wife is partly the reason I am stuck with these pirates today. The amount of anger and frustration I had amassed just a few months after our marriage made me leave my house in a fit of rage. I remember so many times I was told by my company that this ship transits Somalia and they would give me a better option a month later. The crew manager of the company is my maternal uncle - hence the consideration - but I didn’t pay any heed. I just wanted to be away from my wife for a while, anywhere, even in hell. And well, here I am, actually in hell.

It’
s been a month now and we are still awaiting the response from our company. All of us have been kept huddled on the bridge with very limited access to food and water. Although we do get food but it’s only once every day in the form of steamed rice. Sometimes we get boiled potatoes along with it and rarely a vegetable which is anyway inedible. But there’s no fixed timing of when the food would arrive and that’s what makes it all the more excruciating. Other than that we get only half a bottle of water every day which is muddy brown in colour. We use a cloth to filter it as there’s no other choice to quench our thirst. We are not even allowed to move here without their permission. They let us call home just once last week to ask our families to put pressure on the company for the ransom. I had called my mother and cried on the phone with her. The thought of calling Aisha didn’t even occur to me.

Fortunately
they haven’t killed or hurt anymore of us after our cook. However, we live under constant mental strain with death threats if they don’t get their ransom.

Over the last few days we have noticed a slight change in their
behavior toward us. They appear more impatient and agitated as the company hasn’t agreed to their demands yet. They constantly drink in front of us but thankfully, at most, yell or abuse us.

‘
Hey you, motherfucker!’ my thoughts are interrupted by the growl of one of them. Abuses have become a regular affair nowadays. All of us turn toward the surly voice.

‘Who are you staring at
, bastard?’ One of the pirate barks at our third engineer. ‘Eyes down, motherfucker!’ the pirate gets up in an alcoholic haze and walks toward him. ‘Eyes down, I said.’

The t
hird engineer panics and roots his eyes to the ground. From the distance I can see his hands trembling.

‘
Stand up, stand up bastard!’

T
he third engineer looks around in fear. Beads of sweat form on his forehead and he runs a shaking hand across his face to wipe it. His body shudders and he struggles to rise on his feet. ‘S-s-sorry…sir.’

‘Who were you staring at bastard?’
The pirate launches himself at him and punches the third engineer in his face, once, twice…repeatedly. There is a crunching sound of a bone and the third engineer whines with pain. ‘S-sorry sir, p-p-please stop…’

His whining enrage
s the pirate further and he punches him again and again, unleashing his fury at him. He swings his arms wildly and smashes his fist on the third engineer’s already broken nose and jaw alternately. His other companions continue with their drinks, laugh, and encourage him.

All of us freeze
in fear but we know we can do nothing to stop him. Blood oozes out from the third engineer’s face, and the pirate breaks some of his teeth before throwing him back on the floor. ‘You fucker, don’t you dare stare at me again!’

The th
ird engineer groans with pain covering his face with his hand. Blood spurts out from between his fingers. He squirms on the ground sobbing, screaming, begging…for help. My lips tremble at his agonizing sight and I resist my urge to offer him first-aid.

The second officer thinks the better of it and scampers across the bridge over the medical drawer.

‘Hey you, asshole!’ the pirate screams at the second officer. ‘What the fuck! Where are you going?’

‘I’ll
…give him some…medical help.’

‘Come here you bastard,’ the pirate bellow
s. ‘Come, come here!’ He hurls his arms out at him.

Warily, the second officer trudges toward him
, and sneaks a frightening glance at me and Captain. I draw out my hands helplessly and silently admonish him. Just then the pirate takes a big step forward and swings his arms violently across his face.

‘Bastard, who do you ask before you move, huh?’
He hollers and slaps the second officer repeatedly. ‘Who you ask?’ he shouts again, and when he doesn’t get the answer, flings his arms continuously at the second officer. He tells something in their language to one of his companion who nods and sprints outside to follow his orders.

The pirate
keeps thrashing the second officer interspersing the hitting with his question, ‘Why you no ask somebody, you motherfucker, huh, why you don’t take permission?’

His companion returns
a minute later with a canister of…OIL.

Oh my God! What is he planning to do?

I shoot a frightening look at Captain.
The horror in his eyes is mirrored by my own. When I glance back at them my worst fear turns into a dreadful reality when the pirate splashes oil all over the second officer’s body. I glance at Captain again who waggles his finger signaling me not to act.

I know that Captain but they are…

But I know Captain is ri
ght. There is no way we can stop whatever these guys have thought.

‘P-p-lease sir, s-s-
sorry sir, p-p-lease don’t do this, p-please…’ The second officer shivers in trepidation and begs the pirate who stands in front of him sneering with a match stick in his hand.

‘Ha, ha,
ha, bastard,’ the pirate laughs, looking at his companions and the second officer back and forth. All of them laugh and support him. ‘You fuck with us, we’ll fuck you!’

‘S-s-
sorry sir, very, very s-s-sorry,’ the second officer pleads again.

All of us watch in horror. I feel like a spineless, impotent man who can do nothing to help my fellow mate. My
heart throbs loud against my chest and my breathing has grown fast and shallow. I do a silent prayer in my head
. Please God, help him, please, please.

And just then the unthinkable happens…
There is a collective loud gasp when the pirate flicks the match stick in direction of the second officer. Seconds later his whole body is in flames.

‘Oh God!’
I whisper to myself, my hands clasped against my mouth.

Amidst the flames, the second officer
is screaming and wincing. He cavorts all over the bridge, and helplessly searches for a cloth or water to smother the fire.

The pirates continue laughing and smirking. ‘Look at him now, ha,
ha,’ one of them says.

‘H-h-
h-help me someone, p-p-lease, please…,’ he keeps yelling amidst the flames but we do nothing. Some of us cry and others have pressed their eyes shut with their hands clasped to their ears. I keep glancing at the pirates hoping they would stop this madness soon. But they don’t.

Instead
, few minutes later one of them pokes a driftwood in second officer’s chest, and guides him outside the bridge, moving ahead with him, toward the railings, and with a little help of his hands pushes him in the water.

‘CAPTAIN!’
The pirate who initiated the fire bellows and makes his way over to the side toward Captain. ‘Tell your people to behave and follow our orders. You understand!’ He glares at Captain who nods slowly. ‘And why we still not receive any money, huh? Why? Already one month now. Call your company and tell them we will kill you all one by one if we don’t get our money. OK! You understand that? Go, call now!’

             
Captain gets up hurriedly and rushes toward the satellite phone for the call. I’m not sure if that can help us now.

I swallow hard and the memory of
that
afternoon before the pirates boarded
flashes in my mind. I was sitting with Captain in his room nattering about our love stories and marriage.
It all started from there…
All those questions about his incomplete love story for which I yet don’t have the answers emerged that afternoon.

             
Only if we had been a little more careful that day…all this wouldn’t have happened in the first place. The pirates wouldn’t have boarded and the second officer wouldn’t have been…

The screams of the second officer ring loud in my ears
, and those ghastly images frame my mind.

I’m sure
now; sooner or later we’ll all end up that way.

PART - 2

12.  That afternoon before the pirates boarded - 1

25
th
June 2011, Transiting Indian Ocean

It had been close to two weeks since I joined this ship. I had never been so delighted to leave my country and my home. Why not? I was getting complete freedom from Aisha for three months.

             
However, I did feel lonely now and then, and something inside me had died. After all I had loved Aisha for seven long years.

That made m
y stay here quite the opposite of what I’d expected. Sure, I was free to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted; nobody told me not to put the wet towel on the bed, to put my socks in my shoes and not throw them just about anywhere, to hang my jeans and shirts on the hooks and so on, but I felt something tugging at my heart strings.

Nevertheless, I’d
made up my mind to divorce her the moment I set my foot back in India, and never to get married again. The pain and disappointment this marriage has inflicted upon me is certainly not worth the effort I had to make. Why did I not listen to Joe Singh? He’d warned me so many times. And now, I’ll have to bear the repercussions of it for the rest of my life. I haven’t even thought of how much alimony I’ll have to pay her, by the way.

             
I’d been dawdling my time here not a tad interested in any work. I don’t speak to anyone, and my conversations with my fellow crew members are restricted to the incumbent hellos in the mess room. Whenever I find time, I plop down on my bed and try to catch some sleep. When I am awake I day dream.

But I’ll be okay once I ge
t past the initial hangover
, I’d been telling myself. After all, I’d seen the worst in my relationship.

             
Quite a few times I thought Captain could sense there is something wrong with me, by the way he looks at me through the corner of his eyes while we are seated in the mess room. He’s quite observant I believe. Either that or he is good at reading faces. He’d asked me a couple of times ‘Are you okay?’ I’d shrug and wave my hand dismissively. ‘Of course,’ I’d tell him.

             
Then today in the afternoon over lunch he asked me over to his cabin for a drink. Although not in the mood of mingling with anybody, I couldn’t say no to the drink.

An hour later,
I knocked on his door gently and decided that I would just have one drink, and leave early without talking much.

He opened the door and had
a pleasant smile on his face as he welcomed me in his cabin. I could see his brown eyes twinkle behind his glasses. He led me toward the couch and we settled on it sitting across each other.

             
‘So Ronit, how’s your stay turning out to be?’ he asked casually, settling back in his seat.

             
‘So far, so good sir,’ I replied.
OK, where’s the drink?

             
He nodded and stared intensely at me through his stony eyes from above the rim of his glasses. I cringed in my seat and avoided his gaze by looking around.