With Much Gratitude
- Abhilash Tomy
- Feb 6
- 2 min read
I celebrated a birthday onboard the Delhi in the Indian Ocean. The good cooks whipped up a lovely cake even as I was in the process of finding my sea legs. On my birthday a couple of years later, in 2009, I found myself in Aden aboard a self-destructing yacht with neither visa nor money, in the company of a renowned radio astronomer, Professor Radhakrishnan, Sir C.V. Raman's son. He spent an hour recounting his encounters with a physicist whose name stubbornly refused to come to him, except for the first letter "F". After an hour, it surfaced: FEYNMAN.
A year later, I found myself celebrating my birthday with tea and biscuits at the home of the Governor of the Falkland Islands, hosted by his wife who promptly booked a visit to the memorial of HMS Sheffield. That was to be the first of three South Atlantic birthdays, because the year after that, on my birthday, I found myself heading to Rio de Janeiro with a crew who served freeze-dried ice cream with single malt. I took a day off.
Two years later, in 2013, I found myself again in the South Atlantic, celebrating my birthday on the 5th of February as I crossed the 5th degree West.
In 2019, the Prince of Monaco invited me to his state reception, and for some strange reason, the date fell on my birthday that year. I walked up to him and thanked him for the "birthday bash," and upon hearing about it, he promptly gifted me a tie commandeered from the neck of Alessandro Bernardi.
The only birthday I’ve had in the Pacific, and the second most memorable, was in 2023, a few days after crossing the International Date Line. The sea threw a birthday bash… in the literal sense. We must have had a few knockdowns that day, one of which possibly resulted in water from the toilet emptying into the bilge and later seeping into the cushions. I was wet to the bone. And cold.
If you see the video, you’ll understand why the best birthdays are often the ones at home, in warmth, and in the easy company of people who matter.
Thank you to everyone who sent in their wishes. I’m deeply grateful, not just to receive them, but to be able to read them slowly and reply, remembering a time when neither was possible.
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