Everyone assumes the sailor is having adventures, so I stopped saying I am lonely because it sounds ungrateful. But it is possible to be lucky and lonely at the same time. Just needed to say that somewhere the waves would not swallow it.

Night watch on deck, only stars and engine hum for company, and the whole ship asleep. Out here you cannot lie to yourself, the silence pulls the truth up. Tonight it told me I want to come home for good before my daughter stops needing me to.

Yes the merchant navy pays well, that part is true. What they do not put in the salary slip is the birthdays missed, the first steps seen on video, the festivals spent staring at water. Good money, expensive absence, and I am still doing the math on whether it was worth it.

Marriage across an ocean is its own skill, and nobody teaches it. My wife and I live in different time zones for months, catching each other in the cracks of bad signal. Love, I have learned, is also patience and a screenshot of a voice note you replay when the sea is too quiet.

I have seen 30 ports and still miss one

In this job I have watched sunrise over Rotterdam, Singapore, and half the world's harbours. People envy the passport stamps. But I will trade all of them for one ordinary evening walking Marine Drive in Kochi with my daughter's hand in mine.