‘I get scared if the pressure cooker blows its whistle’

A year on from the Air India Flight 171 crash in Ahmedabad, survivors from the medical college it struck tell Namita Singh of their brush with death and the trauma that won’t go away

- NAMITA SINGH

Nearly a year after Air India Flight 171 tore through a medical college campus in Ahmedabad, the physical scars of the disaster remain etched into the landscape.

The blackened hostel buildings of the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College have faded to a dull grey, with a gaping hole where the plane entered the building now looking more like the neglect of age than the impact of one of India’s deadliest aviation disasters.

The Independent visited the scene one year on from the crash that killed 260 people, including 19 on the ground, and injured dozens more. For those who lived through the disaster on the ground, time has done little to soften the memories.

Returning to the site is not an act of closure, they say, but a confrontation with trauma and an experience none of them wishes to relive. The sight of the ruined buildings revives memories of panic, death and immense pain.

Not all survivors have had a choice about whether or not to return to the scene. Toralben Shaileshbhai Lakshari, a canteen worker, was injured fleeing the inferno on the day of the crash, and recalls with horror how she and other staff were ordered to go back into the charred building to retrieve any kitchen equipment that wasn’t damaged beyond use.

Every step towards the wreckage brought to mind thoughts of those who died there, including a five-year-old girl she knew. “When we went there, my whole body froze,” she says. “I did not have it in me to go inside. I kept thinking about how quickly could I leave.”