Patiyalkad mourns its ‘Nammo’: The quiet fighter pilot who rose from a hillside village to the Tejas cockpit

Syal’s double-storey ancestral home sits at the far end of the village, a short walk downhill from the link road. Last Thursday, three to four glow-sign banners hung on adjoining houses, remembering the 37-year-old pilot who died when his Tejas crashed during an air show in Dubai on November 22. The banners were put up by an NGO, Veernari Shakti Resettlement Foundation.

Inside the house, former pradhan Sashi Pal sat among the mourners. “As pradhan, I usually know every detail of every family. But here the family kept things close. I knew he was in the IAF, but never that he was a pilot,” he said. Before he could finish, Ajit Kumar, seated beside him, added: “I saw him working in their fields in a T-shirt and shorts, watering crops, ploughing. I could never imagine he was a Wing Commander.”

In the veranda, his mother, Veena Syal, sat beside a framed portrait of her son placed on a table draped with the Tricolour and his medals. His elder sister, Priya, scrolled through her phone, pulling up childhood photos and images from his Sainik School days and the morning he left for the NDA in 2009. “He was only one-and-a-half years younger than me, but he always behaved like the elder one,” she said. “I always keep these pictures with me.”

Namansh, born on December 24, 1987, studied at Primary School Dalhousie, Army Public School Yol Cantt, and Sainik School Sujanpur Tira before clearing the NDA in 2009. He married Afshan Akhtar, also an IAF officer, in 2014. When this correspondent dropped in, she remained inside as their daughter Aariya played in the small lawn.

“He was a fighter pilot,” said his father, Jagan Nath. “People like him speak less and work more. He was among the best in the country. Why the Tejas crashed is a matter of inquiry, but I became emotional seeing how Air Force personnel from Russia, France and the US paid tribute at the show’s closing. The US team even declined to perform their final sortie as a mark of respect.”

The family has shortened post-funeral rituals from 11 days to six because his daughter-in-law has to return for official formalities. Outside, however, villagers whispered their own anguish. “He was a Wing Commander. It is hard for us to accept this. Why didn’t he get out of the cockpit? Eeh gaal hazam nahi hondi (This doesn’t sit right with us),” said former pradhan Sashi Pal.

For Patiyalkad, a village with a strong Army tradition and now its first IAF officer who reached the rank of Wing Commander, Namansh’s story has become a source of pride and resolve. In recent months, four youths from the village, Ayush Patial, Aryan, Sumit Dogra and Ritik, cleared the Agniveer recruitment. “Eight or nine of us appeared, four cleared,” said 19-year-old Ayush. “Whenever our families told us that the son of retired principal Jagan Nath Syal was a senior officer in the Air Force, we felt inspired.”

Sanjay Kumar, husband of current pradhan Rashma Devi, said the village has always looked up to the Syals. “I never interacted much with Wing Commander Namansh, but his father guided my son Aryan during his preparation,” he said.

Through the day, political leaders including Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur visited the Syal home to offer condolences.

But inside the last house of Patiyalkad, at the edge of the village boundary, the grief remained the same. It was a quiet home remembering a quiet man who soared far beyond it and whose life is already shaping the dreams of those who watched him grow up tilling the same earth.