Remembering Neerja Bhanot: A Soul That Inspired One and All

Neerja Bhanot was probably one of the beautiful faces that one had witnessed in the Indian Airline sector during the early and mid-80s. She was just 2 days short of her 23rd birthday she departed for the heavenly abode. Being a big fan of ‘Kaka’ urf Rajesh Khanna Sahab, she narrated some of his famous dialogues in her short life span. She was born at Chandigarh to Mr. Harish Bhanot and Mrs. Rama Bhanot and brought up at Mumbai. She was the youngest of the three children, the other two being her brothers- Akhil Bhanot and Aneesh Bhanot. She applied for the post of flight attendant in Pan Am Airlines and in 1985 it was decided that to have an all Indian crew to Frankfurt routes from India. She even blossomed at the modelling stage during her training period with Pan Am Airlines.

She was the senior flight pursuer in the ill-fated Pan Am 73 flight that took off from Mumbai and was scheduled to arrive at United States. When the flight touched down at Karachi in Pakistan, 4 armed men entered the flight and hijacked the flight for more than 17 hours. The flight had 361 passengers and 19 crew members. Neerja Bhanot had already informed the cockpit about the danger and this lead to the successful escape of the pilot and the co-pilots through the overhead hatch present in the cockpit. The aim of the hijackers was to divert the flight to Cyprus, where they wanted the release of Palestinian prisoners. In the early hours of hijacking they had killed an American citizen and had asked Neerja and her colleagues to collect the passports of all the American Citizens who were there on board. She along with her colleagues collected 41 passports and threw it in the junk section of the flight, so that these armed can’t distinguish between the Americans and Non Americans. After 17 hours of hijacking, these armed men opened the fire and set off the explosives. Without thinking of her own life, she opened one of the emergency exits and asked everyone present in the deck to quickly escape and abandon the flight. Then, one of the terrorists saw her helping the passengers, so he dragged her by pony tail and shot her. She laid her life, while trying to save 3 American children from these armed men. At a very tender age, she left us and without thinking of her ow life, she sacrificed it ahead of 360 lives that were a part of this ill-fated journey.

Posthumously, she received several bravery awards from various nations. She also became the youngest recipient of highest gallantry award for bravery in India, the Ashok Chakra award. Other awards that she received for her sacrifice include Tamgha-e-Insaniyat from Pakistan, an award given for showing great human kindness along with several bravery awards from the United States.

She ‘came back’ home but in a coffin that was draped in tricolour with just a few days of what could have been her 23rd birthday. She remains a great source of inspiration for each one of us.

Thus,

BRAVERY AND COURAGE DON’T REQUIRE ANY AGE,

IT CAN COME FROM YOUTH OR EVEN AN OLD SAGE.

Jay Hind!!