NEW DELHI, DEC 27: This worst-ever hijacking episode has re-opened wounds for those who have had the misfortune of being part of similar incidents in the past. ``Since I first heard about this hijack drama, I have been frozen,'' said a woman who was in the Delhi-bound flight from Srinagar which was hijacked in 1984.They are in the best position to visualise what the passengers inside are going through. ``The whole incident has been replaying in my head since this happened, though it is nearly 16 years. I have been following the events of the last two days very closely,'' said Ajoy Bose, a journalist who was also on the same plane hijacked by Sikh militants.The claustrophobia of the closed aircraft, the messy toilets and the uncertainty of whether they will live or die are all coming back. They were asked to say their prayers twice by the Sikh militants who had taken the flight to Lahore. ``That was the time I had learnt to get over the fear of death,'' said Swaraj Kaushal, a lawyer who was on the sameflight.The experience of these people corroborates the fact that both physical and mental trauma stay on for life. Kaushal says that even with just 24 hours of continuous sitting in the synthetic seats, he had boils which troubled him for nearly six months and even now he finds it difficult to sit in one position for days.``When the `fasten seatbelt' sign comes on, the entire episode plays in my mind over and over. Some of the people who were in the plane were so traumatised that they have not stepped into a plane since then,'' said Kaushal. He himself took a flight to Chandigarh two days later to shake off the phobia.These people insist that their situation cannot be compared to the plight of the passengers now because nobody had been killed, nor were wives and children separated from the men. The hijackers were armed with knives and a pistol and were brutal to the passengers sitting in the aisle. They had injured the flight engineer but nobody was killed.However, they agree that basicconditions must be the same. ``The most traumatic thing was that the hijackers did not allow us to go to the toilet to relieve ourselves, so the result was that in 24 hours the plane was stinking,'' said Kaushal. He says it is difficult to imagine what the sanitary conditions of the plane will be inside after 48 hours.Kaushal remembers the moment he thought that jumping from the plane might be a good idea, but when he looked down, he could only see wisps of clouds several thousand feet down below. ``What was surprising was when the hijackers announced that we were free, the passengers got up and started hugging and kissing them, taking their autographs on boarding passes,'' said Bose.There are some who feel that this is one of the worse cases in aviation history. K Subramaniam, defence analyst, who was on the Delhi-Srinagar IA flight hijacked from Chandigarh to Lahore and then to Dubai by Sikh ultras, in 1984, says: ``The hijackers then were not violent and we had no complaints as far as theauthorities were concerned''.
