Life after love
July 4th, 2010
By Amarjit Bhinder
It was the worst day of my entire life. A terrible day. I was crushed. A friend of the family (Punjabi film actor Virender; a cousin of Bollywood’s Dharmendra) first informed me of the disaster. “Which flight was bhaaji on?” he asked me and his face became ashen the moment I said “182.” I knew something terrible had happened. As the wife of a pilot, I knew only too well what a midair explosion meant. Everyone onboard the Kanishka was killed. Killed instantly. Killed without mercy. All I remember saying at the time was: ‘I am finished!’”
We had no inkling about any terrorist threat to the Air India aircraft. Actually Sat and I never really discussed the possibility. In fact, flight 182 would have been his last as co-pilot. It was to qualify him as commander (first pilot) on the transatlantic route.
He was keen that I accompany him because there was a full week between landing and take-off from Toronto. “It will be a paid holiday,” he said. But I refused and that made him very unhappy. Something was telling me to stay back for the children. My heart began sinking the moment he asked me to come.
Sat left us on June 13 and that was the last time we saw him alive.
Call it a premonition of some sort, but I had always been very scared when my husband went on a flight. I constantly tracked his movement… I always knew where and what part of the world he was flying over at any given time. My sixth sense was always alert.
But one is always forced to give in to destiny. Now, both my son and son-in-law are commercial pilots. Ashamdeep had his heart set on becoming a pilot just like his father. I never encouraged him but also did not have it in me to stand in his way.
Ours was a different kind of love story. We were married in the winter (December) of 1970. Our families had known each other long and we met at weddings and family functions. And even though we never spoke about it, both of us knew we were meant to be to-gether. When he first proposed, my father, who had his own fears because Sat was in the Air Force and flying an obsolete Super Constellation aircraft, was reluctant. But eventually everyone agreed it was a good match.
Sat was very handsome and looked amazing in his IAF uniform. He used to lovingly call me “Ambee”, which is Punjabi for a raw mango.
Our marriage was like a dream. Immediately after the wedding, he was posted to Shillong and we drove there all the way from Delhi. It took us all of 10 days and we stopped at the Taj Mahal because he insisted we must seek blessings at the greatest shrine of love.
When the war broke out in 1971, Sat rejoined his old Super Constellation squadron at Pune to carry out maritime reconnaissance over the Arabian Sea. He would go out on nightly sorties and I stayed up till he returned each morning.
My husband never spoke about any safety issues during his flying for the Air Force. Though there was always shoptalk in the officers’ mess about how he had brought back the aircraft on a single engine… I did not understand the implications fully but became scared easily as a young wife. Sat always said: “Darling don’t you worry… nothing will ever happen.” That was his favourite line.
We were very happy in the Air Force but it didn’t give him much chance to realise his great desire for the children to travel and see the world. “Travelling, seeing and experiencing new places and people is the best possible education,” he would often say. That was the only reason he chose to join Air India because we could have never done it on an IAF salary.
After we lost Sat, I saved and scrounged to ensure that both kids got a vacation abroad each summer. It was like religion to me… a tribute to the father of my children.
It was very tough after we lost him. I was a protected, young housewife with two little children and money suddenly became a major issue because his salary was our only source of income. I realised soon that I would have to pick up the threads and start all over again. Air India gave me a job at Chandigarh and was generous enough to let me stay here until my children were grown up.
I have never been able to open my mind to anyone after Sat. We had an amazing relationship. I cannot imagine a better partner and marriage. We lived for each other and in a sense I still do. I have met many nice people but it never occurred to me that I could or needed to begin a new relationship.
I kept myself busy fulfilling his dreams and doing all that he would have been happy to see me doing. Sat remains my guiding light and I believe he is still watching us. I was a most pampered housewife and without his (invisible) hand on my shoulder none of this would have been possible.
Life goes on but the trauma is unending. Justice for the victims of Flight 182 has been unacceptably delayed. They have kept our pain alive for the past 25 years and have still not been able to identify and punish the real culprits.
The only satisfaction is that the Canadian Government has now officially acknowledged what we had known in bits and pieces from media reports and people. The John Major Commission has accepted that the threat to Air India was taken very lightly. I personally appreciate Justice Major for having the courage and honesty to bring all these bitter facts on record. But like I said, the culprits have not been, and will probably never be given adequate punishment. And that is the painful bit.
I still cannot understand the minds of the men who planned and executed the bombing — 329 innocent people died that day and thousands of others have been suffering since. This was done in the name of Sikh extremism but I fail to understand this brand of Sikhism. Both my husband and I were proud to be Sikhs but this is definitely not the Sikhism we were brought up to practice. I refuse to believe there is any difference between a Sikh and a Hindu or a person of any other religious belief. They were all innocents aboard the Kanishka that fateful day.
The men who did this were criminals and madmen. The Khalistanis called themselves freedom fighters but why then were they out there in Canada? They were nothing but cowards sitting in safe havens and terrorising us here. All they eventually achieved was that the rest of the world began hating and suspecting all Sikhs!
As told to Asit Jolly
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