LITERATI INVITES YOU TO A BOOK READING OF
‘The First Indian: Story of the First Indian Solo Circumnavigation under Sail’
by Cdr. Dilip Donde
ON SATURDAY 28TH MARCH AT 7 P.M.
ELIAS PATEL WILL BE IN CONVERSATION WITH CDR. DILIP DONDE
On 27 Apr 2006, Cdr Dilip Donde volunteered for ‘Project Sagar Parikrama’, an
endeavour that involved building a sail boat in India and circumnavigating the
earth alone in the boat. As he candidly admits in his book, he volunteered for
the project out of sheer passion and with absolutely no idea of what he was
getting himself into. But as he soon discovered, he wasn’t alone in his
ignorance on the subject; it was shared by over a billion Indians. Essentially
by volunteering for this project, Cdr Donde had thrown himself in the deep end
of the pool without bothering to enquire about swimming lessons. However, he did
manage to keep his head above the water and that is what his book is about. Over
170 people had completed a solo circumnavigation till then, so in a way Cdr
Donde was treading a somewhat beaten path. The crucial difference was that he
was trying to do it in India, with an almost total ignorance of the subject, an
inherent inertia against anything new and an intransigent and quixotic
bureaucracy.
On finishing his trip, most people he met wanted to hear about his experiences
at sea, not comprehending that the hard work put in for over three years, before
starting, was responsible for his safe return. The story of Sagar Parikrama
would have been incomplete without talking about those three years. For Cdr
Donde those years were as exciting as, and often more unpredictable than,
sailing the Southern Ocean. As he looks back on his journey from volunteering
for the project to finishing the circumnavigation, he unravels a number of plots
and sub plots in the story with him being the only constant. His book,
therefore, is an attempt to tell the whole story as he lived through it.
The book is an engrossing narrative about a man’s struggle to achieve his
objectives against all odds. It is a story of how he could do, what he set out
to do, with a firm belief in himself and a desperate will to succeed. It also
talks about the inevitable highs & lows that he went through in making his dream
a reality. As he progressed he kept meeting well-meaning and accomplished people
like Sir Robin Knox - Johnston, the first man to sail solo and nonstop around
the world, Mr Ratnakar Dandekar, a boat builder who was ready to take a huge
gamble in building a sailboat with no past experience in sailboat construction
and many others. They readily helped him as they believed in him and genuinely
wanted him to succeed, eventually becoming a close knit team.
Cdr Donde started blogging two days after starting his path breaking voyage. His
posts on http://sagarparikrama.blogspot.in got him avid followers who tracked
his every move, lived through every storm and sailed into every sunset with him.
In his own words, the single biggest challenge was neither the boat building nor
sailing solo through the Southern Ocean. It was to keep believing that the
project will happen, notwithstanding the odds stacked against it. While he was
not the first person to have been given the opportunity to do the project, he
was definitely the first to grab it. As he reflects, had he not done so, he
would have rued the lost opportunity for the rest of his life. Not having to do
so is his biggest reward from the project.
The story of ‘Project Sagar Parikrama’ is an Indian success story too. Here was
a truly path breaking project that met all deadlines, exceeded its aims, stayed
under budget, wrote a new chapter in the Maritime History of India while leaving
a proud legacy and a million dollar worth of hardware for the future
generations. ‘The First Indian’ is a riveting tale of all this and more from the
mouth of the trailblazer himself.
The book, published in August 2014, has had a very successful run and received
warm accolades from the press as well as the reading public.
Press Coverage:
1.
http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/sailing-the-seven-seas/article6397709.ece
2.
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/first-indian-to-sail-around-the-globe-recounts-his-epic-voyage-in-a-book/
ELIAS PATEL :
The voice of 105.4 FM Rainbow Goa and a well accomplished open water swimmer,
lifeguard, swimming coach & open water diver. A trained & certified open water
scuba diver,lifeguard & swimming instructor ,Elias is passionate about anything
that has to do with the Ocean. Businessman, compere,radio jockey, TV anchor . A
travel enthusiast with a flair for writing, this young man is also a music
enthusiast.