The crash of Bhoja Air Boing 737-200 carrying 127 people on board this evening close to Islamabad is beyond tragic. I don't know what but there is something terrible and very traumatic about a plane crashing - we hear of fires in buildings, bombs exploding, of trains and cars having accidents, of ships and boats sinking - yet, nothing moves us as much as a plane crash. Why is it so?
I have been watching the news since the evening and as the details are coming in, I cannot tear myself away from the screen although at this point there isn't much additional information being given. I am not there to see the anguish of the families, rather that is something the media should stay away from and respect the right to grieve in private. What is bewitching is the very fact that in an instant, just an ordinary instant, life changes forever. The flying time from Karachi to Islamabad is less than two hours, every day several PIA flights fly back and forth. Within couple of hours you are there and all is over, and in such an ordinary journey for a plane to simply catch fire and fall from the sky and then disintegrate in small pieces is very hard to accept.
We are a generation that is run on technology and we have very high regards for it. We rely on cell phones, laptops, Ipads and what not to go through our day and now life without these facilities is almost unthinkable. In the same vein we have a high regard for the flying machine - the airplane - at any given moment there are thousands of planes criss-crossing the sky all over the world. We are impressed by this magnanimous piece of machinery and art and since there are now so few plane crashes we believe in its safety (plane travel is considered safer than any other form of travel).
The crash takes you by surprise, by sheer disruption of your day to day activity, it seems almost frivolous to have been on that particular flight on that particular day, it just refuses to make sense and things like they were destined to die in this manner, or the play of fate rings hollow. It is horrendous, how a huge piece of metal as big as a building carrying so many people can just fall and be crumpled and broken like a plastic toy. The impossibility of survival, the cutting short of many lives abruptly, the lack of information on the dead and the survivors, the response of the airline all creates an atmosphere of helplessness.
God give the people who are suffering the courage and the patience to bear their losses.
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