KOLKATA: In an epic tale of survival against all odds, an Indian fisherman whose trawler sank during a storm in the Bay of Bengal miraculously stayed afloat in choppy waters for four days till a Bangladesh ship picked him up near the Chittagong coast, 600km from his home in south Bengal’s Kakdwip .Rabindranath Das’s trawler was among 100-odd fishing vessels that had left Kakdwip last Thursday despite warnings of extreme weather. They ran into the storm on Saturday and were pushed across the International Maritime Boundary into Bangladesh waters.All the boats capsized, but most of the 1,300-odd fishermen were picked up by Bangladeshi boats over the next few hours. Two trawlers with 25 men in them couldn’t be traced, leading officials to almost give them up for dead.They hadn’t reckoned on Rabindranath invoking his inner Robinson Crusoe to cheat death.The crew of bulk carrier MV Javad spotted him floating off the Chittagong coast around 10.30am on Wednesday, four days after his trawler FB Nayan-1 sank.Attempts to get close to Rabindranath, however, failed as he would float away every time the ship approached. The ship finally caught up with him nearly three nautical miles (almost 5.5km) from the spot where he had been first sighted.Rabindranath was thrown a life jacket and hauled up on board about a couple of hours later. The crew then alerted Bangladesh Navy and Coast Guard.“He was provided first-aid, food and fresh clothes on board before being shifted to a hospital,” an official of SR Shipping Ltd of Bangladesh, which owns the vessel, said.The stunning story of how Rabindranath spent four days floating and swimming in the Bay of Bengal has raised hope among the families of the 24 other missing fishermen from Kakdwip that they might yet survive.South 24-Parganas district magistrate P Ulganathan met senior Bangladesh officials on Thursday to discuss how to get Rabindranath back home quickly and conduct another search for possible survivors.“We are still praying, although we know that it is impossible to survive in the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal for so many days,” Bijan Maity, assistant secretary of the West Bengal United Fishermen’s Association, said.Read this story in Bengali