If it is difficult to watch the movie, "Neerja", it is not because one cares too little but too much, knowing how it ends.
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.
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 is a vicious circle. 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.
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.
Even what is called natural death is difficult to reconcile to. 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. I was working then.
Sometimes, after office hours, I would go to attend family weddings. Halfway, I would return home since it made no sense to proceed, leaving behind those who were too ill to attend the wedding.
Today, there is no one at home. Photographs of those who were at home now hang on the wall. And I find it even more difficult to attend weddings. Going alone and returning alone is difficult.
Today is February 22, 2016. And I find myself going back in time to February 22, 2015, February 22, 2014, February 22, 2013, February 22, 2012, and February 22, 2011 when there were people at home.
It would, I realize, be so very difficult for the family of Neerja to remember year after year her birthday (September 7, 1962) and to relive the preceding days in September 1986 when the hijack happened.
Neerja never made it home for her birthday on Sunday, September 7, 1986. On her birthday, her coffin was brought back to Mumbai from Karachi where she was shot dead by terrorists on the night of Friday, September 5, while trying to rescue 359 passengers by evacuating them through the emergency-exit of the hijacked Mumbai-New York Pan Am Flight 73.
The movie tells us that Neerja was very fond of the films starring Rajesh Khanna, especially "Anand" where he plays the role of a cancer patient who is determined to be cheerful and tells his doctor, "Babumoshai, zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahin" (Life should be big not long).
Which reminds me of an advertisement of the 1970s/80s which says, "Live life kingsize", ironically for a brand of cigarettes.
What is not mentioned is that there is an undertone of sadness in the movies where Rajesh Khanna plays the role of someone whose days are numbered. Like in "Anand" where he emotes the lyrics of the song, "Mauth, tu ek kavita hi" (Death, you are a poem")
The only way to break out of this circle is to reach out. Which is what Neerja did during those harrowing 16 hours of the hijack and the worst moments of the shooting by the terrorists.
Which is why one of the passengers who survived called Neerja an angel: "If at all there is a God, for me it is her. Today I am a doctor because of her. Like me, there are 300 odd people who survived because of her. Even now after 30 odd years, I can't forget her lovely face. She was an angel. Neerja was the first person who could have run away. She didn't. I was in the sixth row of the economy-class and vividly remember how they shot her at point-blank range in front of me. I was shocked to see her dying. A young lady commanding a plane (after the pilot, co-pilot and flight-engineer had escaped through the cockpit-hatch, as per the anti-hijack protocol), negotiating with terrorists, keeping the passengers calm and maintaining her cool is the kind of bravery you rarely see. I request the people of India to watch this film," Dr Kishore Murthy is quoted as telling Rediff.com.
It seems particularly poignant that some of those she saved were children. The innocence of children transcends any circle of sorrow.
The other day I was sitting in a car at a traffic-light when I watched a woman holding a little schoolboy by hand and walking him through the pedestrian-crossing. The moment he reached the pavement, the little boy released his hand and did a hop, step and jump. And then he reached out for his escort's hand since there was one more road to cross.
DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.
