By Matters India Reporter

Mumbai: Sanju Agnel Varkey says he is alive now only because of Jesus whom he had called before jumping into the Arabian Sea from a sinking barge.

The 24-year-old was among 186 people rescued by the Indian Navy after a 15-hour ordeal in the sea.

They were on accommodation barge P-305 that was caught in cyclone Tauktae and sank some 70 km off Mumbai coast on May 17.

With 23 more bodies recovered on May 20 the death toll rose to 49 by the fourth day of the mishap. As many as 26 people are still missing as search and rescue efforts continued.

“I felt I was jumping into death but Jesus saved me,” said Varkey, who floated in the stormy sea from 5:30 pm on May 17 to 8:30 am the following day.

Varkey’s cousin Daughters of St Paul Sister Rosy Mathew says Varkey had told her that he had to keep up “a brave fight to keep alive among the raring waves.”

She also said the entire family was in tension on hearing about the barge sinking. “It has been an ordeal for all of us, agonizingly waiting for the good news to come. God did send the Good news at last,” she told Matters India May 20.

On reaching the shore, Varkey called home in Kerala and said, “Papa everything is lost,” to the consoling words of the father, “Son, you are everything for us.”

Varkey’s sister, his only sibling, works in Saudi Arabia.

He now rests after a medical checkup. “Only Mother Mary and Jesus were with me. I could see the flickering lights of the life jackets here and there and I knew they were my friends,” he said clutching to the Rosary around his neck.

He said the waves that rose 15 meters high had separated them. “At one moment I saw a rescue boat and moved towards it, but by the time I reached it was gone. At one moment I thought we may not get any help,” he recalled.

Varkey, a mechanical engineer who joined the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) in 2017 had worked offshore before also. This was his second time offshore work that began in October 2020.

They were in three accommodation barges — living quarters for employees working offshore. Two barges returned to the shore when they were warned about the impending storm, while P-305 stayed on. They were deployed by Afcons under its contract with state-owned ONGC.

One survivor, not wanting to be named, recounted, “Our Papaa- 305 Barge master — was confident that we could manage. But then one by one the anchors got detached, and the barge began to float around. It hit somewhere and broke. Water began to get in. At first we removed the water with the buckets. Then we noticed that one side was thinking. That was the time we started jumping into the water.”

Some who jumped into the sea before Varkey and friends died after their life boat broke. Some hit something while jumping and died.

More than 1,500 Navy personnel are engaged in search and rescue operations.