India, June 2 -- For many nights, the city lights shone on one side and the vast sea hummed on the other, but the seafarers could go in neither direction. The young men, who survived debilitating loneliness for months aboard an abandoned vessel docked at the Mumbai Port Authority (MPA), could finally sign off only on May 11, after a Bombay high court order.

Gurusewak Singh Bajwa, 21, a native of Uttarakhand, who spent six months on board MV Sencer 1 doing rotational shifts with four others, told HT that there was nothing to do except ensuring that no unauthorised person boarded the ship. "There were just two of us on board during a shift. It gets harder, more mentally than physically, after the first couple of months," he said.

Bajwa sa...