As yet another Indian Air Force aircraft crashes I sit back and reflect on the Fauji life.
As I saw the news scroll I felt that a missing aircraft can still be found. Okay the radio contact was lost, but that doesn’t mean anything. It could be a malfunctioning radio. I was hoping for a happy ending here.
It was in the east so had to have come from Jorhat. I think of friends posted to Jorhat. My husband’s course mates, their wives, the kids. I quickly count off one man from the list, I know he’s doing a course in Bhatinda.
Then the phone calls start. From friends in non flying units, who want information. The concern is there and so is the scare. Then the information filters in. Names Butalia, Shahji, Manas, two youngsters we don’t know.
Now the tragedy is real. It is personal. It is people whom you know. Some you have met and some you have been posted together with in another station. Then the crash is confirmed.
Hope for survivors is like hoping for an ice cream to not melt in an oven. There are no parachutes on an AN32. My husband told me so. Transport aircraft are not equipped with them. They are not supposed to crash, but they do.
One just did. The loss of a flight crew, plus two youngsters who went on the flight for their clearances. A painful reminder to us all that life can be unpredictable.Its not always the fighters that crash. It can be one of our husbands too.
The twins who will never see thier father again. The young wife who was packing to leave for Nagpur when tragedy struck. The farewell party that became the funeral pyre. That’s what this life is all about. Ups and downs and not all happy landings.
