'That moment when I didn't know how to be a journalist'
Ahmedabad
: Grief is supposed to be personal. But when it emanates from an accident playing out in the public, it ceases being private.
At the crash site of
Air India
flight AI171 in Ahmedabad, grief played out under the intense eye of the world.
Families clung to photos, whispered prayers, and searched desperately for pieces of their loved ones, surrounded by rescue workers, police, journalists, and the curious.
by Taboola
by Taboola
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I had come to cover the story. To document the first draft of history. To ask questions. But what I discovered standing outside the gates of
BJ Medical College
, was that, in that place and at that moment, I didn't know how to be a journalist.
What I saw refuses to leave me: Two Manipuri sisters had arrived to call back the souls of their loved ones - cabin crew members who had died when the aircraft crashed into a hostel.
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One collapsed, wailing. The other stared at the blackened walls. They performed a ceremony -
Thawaimi Kousinba
- lighting incense, laying out marigolds, and delicately saying words that felt like a goodbye.
I stood there, teary-eyed, clutching my notebook, unable to write. It was a story. A human story. And that too an 'exclusive' one. But I couldn't bring myself to speak to them.
FLIGHTLESS WINGS
On June 12, I was at an office event when my phone buzzed. A
plane crash
in Ahmedabad. For a moment, I had dismissed it - probably a training aircraft, I had assumed. Then another message: Air India Dreamliner. International flight. Crashed into a hostel.
My boss had found me before I found him. "Forum, go to Ahmedabad. Now. We need the human story. We need the aviation story". It should have been an adrenaline rush for any journalist. But I couldn't shake off the feeling - I was chasing a story built on someone else's tragedy.
What was the difference between me and an ambulance chaser? By the time I arrived at about 1 am, the fire had long been extinguished, but the search continued.
Gloves and masks were strewn across the wide lane leading up to the site. Against the wall lay a 200-feet clipped wing and scorched, with wires spilling out and metal torn to shreds.
Perched atop was a hyper-local journalist, performing into a phone mic as his partner filmed him. Aviation journalists all carry their own quiet bucket lists. Some chase cockpit rides, others dream of making an in-flight announcement over the crew phone. For me, it was standing on the wing of a parked aircraft - a simple, almost childlike aspiration tied to the fascination of being an aviation journalist.
Irony
was, when I finally stood before one, the wing was charred, clipped, and lifeless. It was right there, just a few feet away. But no part of me wanted to stand on it now. This was not how I imagined it would feel.
We reached the hospital at 2 am. It was still buzzing. Sirens of ambulances screeched through the night, cutting through the silence, carrying the weight of smoke, dust, and grief that lingered in the aftermath. At the hospital, my colleague and I found a crack in the window near the post-mortem room and peered in.
"That is...", I asked. He nodded. A charred arm slipped out of the white cloth and hit the floor. The doctor picked it up, still in conversation with his colleague, and cut into the flesh for DNA testing.
My stomach churned. I looked away.
GRIEF'S DNA
By the second day, the crash site and the hospital had turned into a spectacle. Grieving families jostled with reporters shoving microphones, cameras clicked relentlessly, security personnel barked orders to push people back, but the curious climbed walls to get a better view. The crash brought a media frenzy of over 700-800 journalists from across the globe.
Tragedy had become content.
Anilbhai, a widower, sat on a hard bench outside the post-mortem room. He'd lost his only son and daughter-in-law. He told me their story as he had told many others before me. "They were going to take me with them," he said. "Now I am all alone. Now I am all alone."
Neither of us could hold back our tears.
Inside the DNA testing room, I was speaking to a family member of one of the crew when an Air India staffer quietly asked me to step aside. No argument. Just a quiet assertion that I didn't belong there at that moment. I stepped away. Some lines didn't need to be crossed.
SHARED EXHAUSTION
Over the next few days, the hospital became a revolving stage of familiar faces - cops, hospital staff, volunteers, Air India employees and journalists. We barely knew each other, but we recognised each other's exhaustion. A quiet nod, a shared bench - small acts of unspoken solidarity in the middle of a catastrophe. In most cases we didn't know each other's names, but familial smiles and offering a seat or a bottle of water came naturally. Including the Air India staff that asked me to step aside a few days ago.
In the heat that refused to relent, I found a two-star female officer near a barricade outside the hostel. She hadn't been home in over two days. Her shift was about to end when she was told to stay put - a political leader was coming, and the site needed to be secured again. She didn't complain. She didn't have time to.
On one of the days at the crash site, I heard a cat-like howl. It went on for more than 15 minutes. I thought two cats were fighting. I tried peeping from above the wall and spotted a black and white dog covered in soot, howling and whining softly.
I later learnt he was sitting under the handcart of a tea-vendor, his usual haunt. In a viral video from the crash site, a woman can be seen running towards the man shooting the video. She was the tea stall owner. Her only son had gone to serve tea inside. Later, it was known he lost his life too. The dog which was inside too, had eventually been rescued.
On the other side, I watched as a group of men tried to scale a broken wall to get closer to the crash site. The female officer banged her stick on the ground, ordering them to leave. They laughed and said: "Aagad jaiye,
tyan
thi saaru dekha se." Which translated to, let's go ahead, we'll probably get a better view from there.
Even in the middle of unimaginable grief, someone is always trying to get a better view. Between curiosity and cruelty, the line is always thinner than we think.
Sitting in the investigator's office, I noticed the deep lines etched into his face, the kind exhaustion that seeps into your bones. He told me he had spoken to the first responders - the airport staff, the
ATC
officials, the police, the emergency crews. "They are shattered," he said quietly. "Some of them saw it happen with their own eyes. They can't unsee it. The sound, the fire, the falling - it plays on a loop in their heads."
A TOUGH ASK
I spent a week in Ahmedabad. Before I went to the airport, I made one last stop at the crash site. By then, as DNA matches trickled in, families had begun to find closure.
On the way, I passed at least six row houses, each holding the same quiet ritual. A white cloth laid out like a sacred square. A garlanded photo. A burning incense stick. A prayer muttered to the heavens. Grief had spilled from the crash site into homes, into streets, into the air.
When my car pulled up near the barricades, I saw flower petals scattered across the road. Someone told me that a family had paused here on their way to the cremation ground. Maybe it was closure.
But closure, like everything else in this tragedy, was going to be a tough ask.
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