![]() Going alone and returning alone is difficult. And I find it even more difficult to attend weddings. ![]() ![]() ![]() Photographs of those who were at home now hang on the wall. Halfway, I would return home since it made no sense to proceed, leaving behind those who were too ill to attend the wedding. Sometimes, after office hours, I would go to attend family weddings. For years, I lived in a house where there were three people, two of whom had been diagnosed with cancer–my wife and her elder sister. Which brings us to the hijack of Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi airport where Neerja saved the lives of the innocent and the children when the terrorists started firing on the passengers at around 9.30 pm on the night of September 5, 1986.Įven what is called natural death is difficult to reconcile to. The Nazis inflicted it on the inmates of the concentration camps, some of whom inflicted it on the Palestinians, some of whom inflicted it on the rest of the world through terrorist attacks and hijacks. In the poem “September 1, 1939”, Auden writes, “I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn/Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.” It’s like revisiting the past and the museums set up on the ruins of the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka and Sobibor. Throughout the horrifying situation, Neerja didn’t succumb to her fears and instead she fought her personal demons from the past and from the minute the plane was hijacked, through the terrifying 17 hours to the grueling end, she used her courage, wits and compassion to make sure that the passengers were protected, going as far as to hiding the passports of the American passengers.If it is difficult to watch the movie, “Neerja”, it is not because one cares too little but too much, knowing how it ends. Neerja had escaped an abusive marriage at a very young age and as a life change, decided to become an air hostess, subsequently impressing everyone so much that they made her a purser. This is the story of Neerja Bhanot, a 22 year old part time model, who was the head purser on the flight. ![]() ‘Neerja’ is a biopic and a cinematic representation of the dramatic events that unfolded on September 5th, 1986 when Pan Am Flight 73 from Bombay to New York was hijacked in transit at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi by Palestinian extremists from Abu Nidal’s terrorist outfit. ![]()
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