Here’s an Indian man whom I met in Svendborg last December. I was having breakfast early morning and Rajesh (not his real name) walked up to my table and asked if he could boil his food in the kitchen. I told him I don’t work in this restaurant, but I can speak to the staff to see if they can help. I knocked at the kitchen door, a staff member came out and offered help. I realised that Rajesh needed to grill his bread and not ‘boil’ the packet, he couldn’t find the right words.

We shared a few moments together over breakfast. He told me he was temporarily sent to Denmark by his employer to work on a project. He’d been struggling with the local food for the past few days. Some of it because his body couldn’t take it and the rest did not align with his faith.

As Rajesh spoke in broken English words did not matter anymore. In fact, his experience took me back to my own time as a seafarer. I had once flown from India to Amsterdam to join a ship in Belgium. After three flight connections and a long wait at the airport, I arrived at the hotel in Zeebrugge at midnight. The kitchen had closed and there was no one at the reception. Upon calling the number, the owner appeared from the next door in her pyjamas and offered a portion of home-made macaron cheese (how kind!).

Before leaving, she asked me to report to the reception at 5.30am. I took the macaroni to my room, but I couldn’t even smell it. I can’t take cheese, my body is not enculturated to eating cheese.

Early morning, a taxi arrived to take me to the docks. I got onboard, the watchman, Jerry, helped me with my luggage and asked me to head straight to the bridge. The outgoing officer was scheduled to leave in less than 2 hours.

I took over and survived for the next two hours. I had my first meal after almost 20 hours. I never thought about it until I met with Rajesh.

If you’re searching for a breach of compliance in my story, there is none. There was food, water, rest, transport service and just enough time for a take-over. And yet, I suffered starvation, jet lag, sleep deprivation, and I felt less than a human.

It is encouraging watching the industry moving from one thing to another – human factors, human performance, and the human element. And yet when we scratch the surface what is often missing is what makes us human persons – food, faith, religion, beliefs, biases, emotions, intuitions, feelings, superstitions, habits, perceptions, and our bodily needs.

I was speaking to someone the other day and she said, ‘what you are talking is the fifth level of human progress, we’re only at the first step.’

I’d invite you to think again. Which people (leaders) do you admire the most and why? Human dignity is a foundational need. It is not a heavenly desire.

I’m thinking what if Rajesh was to suffer an injury in foreign land or I was to collapse on my first day onboard?

What would be the root cause of the accident?

Is this even something we should discuss in the open?