(On June 11 2025, Air India flight AI171 left Ahmedabad for London, with 242 people. It crashed almost immediately. 241 people died. This piece is for them)
the kind I don’t usually feel.
And hunger pangs, also not something I often know.
And yet, I did.
The indecision spilled over, slow, ominous—
To eat or not eat. Wait, or not wait. Stay, or go back home.
Land, or not land.
And at once, in a sudden moment,
the pain of the pilot—his indecision, his panic,
the weight of 241 lives— became mine.
Even as I boarded a much-delayed plane.
I could feel it.
The news was everywhere.
I saw people holding their loved ones a little tighter. More deliberate.
I saw patience for the baby that was wailing.
A softness in late-night smiles offered to strangers.
Grief brings people closer.
And my heart broke for the people who would never again
smile at strangers. Or look annoyed at the small inconveniences.
The sky was full, just like our hearts.
That sky— somewhere not too far from here—
was full of metal, smoke, tears, of breath,
of people going somewhere.
Not long ago.
Their suitcases held hopes. Their phones, itineraries.
Their hands had just held babies.
Their eyes had watched the full moon.
They were ordinary people— the kind that stop to tie a shoe,
or stare too long at the sea.
And then the sky broke open.
Not like rain— but like a thread snapping
at the center of the heart.
I do not know their names.
But I feel them now—
moving through the trees,
Moving through the crowds nameless-formless
passing over rooftops
Like wind that forgets
it’s been called a storm.
Where did they go?
Perhaps
into the arms of that same great silence
that receives every bird,
every leaf, every whispered prayer
that ever rose and vanished.
I sit.
And the tears just flow.
Each one—now a part of the stillness.
And I want to ask the sky
how it could carry such weight—
and still look so blue.
But the sky says nothing.
It is full.
~ Rhea
