GOING SOLO

Call him Abhilash. Like the narrator in Moby Dick, the “watery part of the world” is his obsession. In that classic 19th century novel, Captain Ahab compulsively pursues “the great white whale”, but our hero’s fixation is the Golden Globe Race to circumnavigate the world solo. Consider these numbers: over 6,000 people have climbed Mount Everest since Hillary and Tenzing, and at least 570 have “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” into outer space after Gagarin. But scarcely 180 humans have ever sailed around the world by themselves without stopping, and only one is Indian. Meet Abhilash Tomy

-  VIVEK MENEZES

In 2011, Lieutenant Commander Tomy of the Indian Navy found himself struggling in an isolated quadrant of the Indian Ocean. Along with his mentor, India’s first circumnavigator Commander Dilip Donde, he had completed the South Atlantic Race from Cape Town to Rio. Then the two sailed back together to South Africa before Tomy went it alone for the voyage home. That odyssey changed everything: “On the first day, the autopilot stopped working. That meant no sleep, which could induce severe hallucination. I called Commander Donde, and he was of no help. I called the guy who did the wiring, and he too was of no use. I had a choice. I could either come back or press on. I decided to press on.”

Things got very bad, very fast. Tomy says, “I felt seasick for the first time in a year. I lost a batten. A sail tore. There was fire in the generator. The wind vane autopilot broke, and a storm raged outside.”

The young sailor became “very upset and angry at someone. I couldn’t pinpoint who. On the fourth day, I realised that the anger that was eating into me might not let me finish the voyage. And if I did not finish, the non-stop circumnavigation would be in danger. That was when I discovered the power of chanting. I chanted meaningless sounds for hours till my mind was under control. From then it did not matter if there was a storm outside or if it was sunny and calm. I was always peaceful.”