I had a learning and development intervention to be conducted at Shirpur in Maharashtra. The airport near the place was at Indore. The aircraft in which I travelled crash landed at Indore. I was hurt and had a fairly big bruise on my forehead which needed eleven stitches. I wrote an article about the accident. However, several strange things that happened after the accident are worth writing about.
Strange and funny things happen even in the middle of tragic circumstances. A nephew of mine used to work at Indore and I had decided to visit him after reaching Indore. The best gift that I could give him, when I would visit him, was to carry something from Mangalore. I carried two packets of fresh jackfruit pods in my suitcase to give them to him as they could not have been available to him at Indore.
In the melee of everything that happened, and also with no contact of my nephew, I had forgotten the two packets of jackfruit pods which were in my suitcase when I was admitted to the hospital. When I opened the suitcase to change my dress, I noticed that the two packets of jackfruit pods were safe inside. It did spread some smell in the room though I kept the suitcase closed till then. A representative from the college from Shirpur, where I was supposed to address students, met me and I told him that I would travel with him the next morning.
It was after the Shirpur person left, that two nurses came into my room to check on me. While nursing me with injections and tablets, one of the nurses spoke to the other in Malayalam and said that she had got the smell of jackfruit in the room. They had no inkling that they were treating a person who also knew the same language. After a brief conversation with them in the language in which they spoke, which also surprised them, I gave them the two packets of jackfruit pods. The next morning, before I was discharged, the nurses came to the room and thanked me for a strange gift which they could not even dream of being made available at Indore.
There are still stranger, still more humourous things that could happen. I did conduct the two learning interventions for which arrangements were made at the engineering college at Shirpur. Of course, I had to reschedule my return journey because I lost one day. On the sixth day, the next day being my day of return to Mangalore via Bombay and Indore, a couple of professors of the college took me to a hospital for consultation and removal of the stitches. After hearing that I was to travel the next morning, he said the wound is cured enough for removing the stitches. I agreed and he did the procedure. While coming out, I wanted to know the name of the doctor. The professor could not remember and he looked at the name on the wall. There the name of the doctor was written and the description below shocked me. It was written ‘Gynecologist’. Thus, I had a rare chance to be treated by a gynecologist and that too for an unusual complaint.
There are stranger than strange things that happen. For six months I was unwilling to travel by air for I was gripped by a mortal fear of the accident at Indore. Somehow I picked enough courage and decided to travel again by air. On my first trip itself, I asked a fellow passenger to keep talking to me while we would be landing, when the captain announced fastening of the seat belts for landing. I told him briefly in a few seconds, about the air crash at Indore and that I was terribly afraid of landing, suffering from landing blues indeed. I had the worst of a shock which led me to decide never to tell anyone about the plane crash in which I was involved because of the comment of the fellow passenger. He said then ‘I am more afraid than you now’. Probably, he could have also imagined that I could bring another ill luck.
Extremely strange things do not end there. In Mangalore I filed a petition in the consumer court asking for compensation from Jet Airways. I wrote to Jet Airways several times asking them to explain the cause of the air crash. Was it an aircraft failure? Was it a pilot’s failure or was it a flight control failure? They never answered. That is how I landed up in the court of law. A former student of mine was my lawyer. He promised me that the case was very strong because I held both official and social positions which would guarantee a higher compensation. I had plenty of work and therefore, I did not bother to routinely check the progress of the case. However, sometime later, I called my lawyer and asked him what happened to the case. He informed me that the case was dismissed which surprised me. So, I suggested to him that we would approach the higher court, to which he replied that the time for a petition to the higher court was already over, and therefore, I gave up the case. A couple of months later, I met yet another student who was also practicing law in the same court. In passing, he mentioned to me that Jet Airways had paid a bribe of rupees fifty thousand to my lawyer and he did not argue the case and purposely he did not inform me about the dismissal either.
Strange and still stranger are the things that happen around each one of us.
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Prof. Sunney Tharappan, is Director of College for Leadership and HRD, Mangaluru. He trains and writes and lives in Mangaluru. Email: tharappans@gmail.com