Every weekend, Amit Wahi called his wife Pooja. But late last month, the additional second officer on Al Khaliq suddenly rang her up on a Thursday. His wife was seven-and-a-half months pregnant, he was homesick and missing his five-year-old son — and keen to hear those loved voices. Hours later, his ship, with a crew that includes 24 Indians, was captured by Somali pirates near the Seychelles.

Al Khaliq, coming from Russia, was due to dock at Mombassa on October 22. Amit was to go home to his wife in Agra by the end of December, in time for the arrival of their newborn. He called Pooja up midweek because he had got a discounted satellite calling card for Diwali, says his wife.

It’s been over a week of negotiations between the Somalis and Al Khaliq’s Mumbai-based owners, SNP Shipping Service Pvt Ltd, and Pooja is getting impatient. “I am very worried, but I have to handle the situation — which is caring for my son and old in-laws,” she says.

In distant Tuticorin, Veer Mohan’s family shares a similar situation. Around midnight on October 21, his son, Naushad, 23, a cook on Al Khaliq, called home to speak to his parents. Since they were asleep, he told his sister that he would call back the following day. His call never came.

Like the Wahis, Veer Mohan and his family are worried sick. His sugar level has shot up and his wife, a high blood pressure patient, had to spend two days in the hospital.

Somali pirates may be wreaking havoc on waters far away from our own, but the shock waves they leave can be increasingly felt back home.

The families of 24 seamen taken hostage on October 15 on the MV Kota Wajar, a Singaporean bulk carrier, in the Somalian waters have still no idea about the fate of their loved ones. “My son Pulkit was keen on seeing the world,” says Naresh Kapoor, who runs a furnishing business. “Please try and do something — he is my only son,” he pleads.

Pulkit, 22, a student of BSc (Nautical Science) in Kanpur, was doing his internship as a cadet on MV Kota Wajar, says his sister Sumegha. Now the Kapoors wait by the telephone, hoping every minute to hear some good news.

The uncertainty is killing. The hijackers are swathed in silence, which could be a tactic, says Captain S. Bahl, director of the Mumbai-based SNP Shipping Service Pvt Ltd, which owns Al Khaliq.

In the midst of despair, the families have been trying hard to be optimistic — especially for the sake of older family members. In Dharamshala, Dr Deepika Pathania, wife of Raghuvir Singh Pathania, chief officer on MV Kota Wajar, says she has had to set aside her grief to care for her old and ailing in-laws.

But the families are getting impatient. “Companies have no idea of how the anguish in our homes increases with each passing day,” says Rashna Kanwar, Pathania’s mother-in-law.

Some believe that little is done to ensure the safety of the crew. “Nobody is interested in the life of the seamen who are very precious to their families,” says Seema Goyal, wife of Prabhat Kumar Goyal, captain of the Japanese-owned Stolt Valor, hijacked by Somalis last November and later released. “I was never happy with the approach of the government or owners of the ship,” she adds.

The Singapore based Pacific International Lines, owners of MV Kota Wajar, have their own way of pacifying the families. In a letter, William Tay, the company’s executive director, corporate, addresses families saying, “It is very important that you understand that the speed of the negotiation is controlled completely by the hijackers. If they choose not to call the company or do not pick up the phone when we call, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. There will be many times before this negotiation is over when there will be no apparent progress. However, just because there are no visible signs of progress does not mean that nothing is happening. When a farmer plants a crop he knows that it will be some time before he sees the first shoots above the ground, but this does not mean that the crop is not growing from the moment he plants it.”

Held to ransom: Raghuvir Singh Pathania (top) and Pulkit Kapoor are both on the hijacked MV Kota Wajar

But the situation could take a nasty turn in the coming weeks, warns Tay in his letter emailed on the evening of October 26. The hijackers could ask crew members to pass “threatening messages to the family members with the aim of increasing the pressure on the company,” he writes. They will also “be looking out for crew whose family were likely to break under intense pressure,” he adds.

Acknowledging it to be a frightening experience, the letter adds that “the crew are generally well treated by the hijackers, no matter what they say to you on the phone.”

But this may not necessarily be true — as Bijendra Malik saw on board the Stolt Valor. Malik, a deckhand, had to face the anger of the captors, who kept ordering him in broken English to go this way or that.

The negotiator — a Somali in his 30s — was the only one who knew any English, says Malik. The rest of them — tall, wiry young men in their 20s — routinely kicked the hostages or held them at gun point. They would stop only when the negotiator intervened. Injectible drugs found on the ship’s bridge indicated that some were drug users.

But while Malik’s mind was occupied with thoughts of his family and newborn child, he was most afraid around the time the 18 hostages were released after 62 days in captivity. “The gang of 32 pirates had split into two groups and begun fighting among themselves — possibly over money,” he says. “One gang seemed to want to kill us and the other appeared against it.”

The hostages were seated on the ship’s bridge, caught in the crossfire. “The Somali negotiator was bleeding in the head and the hostages sent him to us to have him bandaged,” he says. Malik vomited blood and another crew member fell unconscious after getting injured.

But there were other moments that helped keep their spirits up. The crew was cautious about not finishing their rations. When the rations did get over, the captors allowed the hostages to fish — with hooks on the ship — between 4 pm and 5.30 pm, says Malik. “By God’s grace we caught some very big fish — which lasted us for up to two days at a stretch,” he laughs.

Today Malik has had to steer away from his shipping career. He has become a building contractor in Rohtak. But few things compare to the thrill that he experienced when the ransom money was thrown into the sea from a helicopter. “The ship’s second officer was ordered to accompany a pirate in a speedboat to collect the bag of cash,” he says. Hostages were warned that they would be shot if they tried to flee. Only after the money was counted did the Somali negotiator turn to the hostages and say, “Go.” The families of those aboard Al Khaliq and MV Kota Wajar are waiting for history to repeat itself.