On the morning of May 19, Baburam Kumar received the most haunting phone call of his life. It was his son’s employer, Mumbai-based Glory Sh...
On the morning of May 19, Baburam Kumar received the most haunting phone call of his life. It was his son’s employer, Mumbai-based Glory Ship Management, calling to say that its tugboat Varapradha had sunk in the Arabian Sea during Cyclone Tauktae.
Baburam’s 27-year-old son Vijay Kumar was one of the 13 seafarers on board. Eleven had died. He was one of them, they were told.
Distraught, Baburam took the first train out of his village in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and reached Mumbai on May 20, where he was rushed to JJ Hospital to identify his son. “They must have shown me dozens of bodies, but I could not identify any of them,” said Baburam, 56, a farm labourer from Kanpur district’s Khamela village.
Most of the bodies he saw were of men who were on board Barge P-305, one of several vessels working on contract for the government-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation at Bombay High, an oilfield located 176 km off the coast of Mumbai. Tugboat Varapradha was assigned to tow another vessel called Gal Contractor.
After the first warnings about Cyclone Tauktae were announced on May 11, most of these vessels moved to the safety of the shore. But P-305 and Varapradha were among five...
