Ten years after Kandahar

Our families thought we were in Goa. But we boarded a flight from Goa to Delhi and then to Nepal. After a week,we took the IC-814 back to India and the plane was hijacked, says Rakesh Kataria,who runs a car accessories shop in Chandigarhs Sector 27.

Initially,their parents had no way of knowing they would be on the hijacked plane. We didnt know our children had gone to Nepal. We saw the hijack news on TV but then had no idea that they were on that flight, says Rakeshs father Vinod Kataria.

For the first two days,we never thought well survive, says Pooja,now a mother of two. It was my birthday on December 27. I pleaded with one of the terrorists to release Rakesh and me and told them it was my birthday. He said he couldnt assure our release as talks were yet on with the Indian government but offered to celebrate my birthday. He announced to all the passengers that it was my birthday and gave me an apple and a knife to cut it. We cut the apple and they all wished me. The hijacker gifted me a Kashmiri shawl he was wearing. A co-passenger gifted us his Rado watch. These gestures made us hopeful that we will get out alive, says Pooja.

Its been 10 years since the incident but the fear has never left them. Just a few days ago,some news channel was talking about the incident. I could see the fear in Poojas eyes. She started crying. Though our daily routine keeps us busy,its difficult to forget such a close brush with death, says Rakesh.

The incident has changed them in other ways too. Over the years,Rakesh has become more religious and involved in social work. In the coming years,he hopes to do more for physically challenged children.

For the last few years,my son has been actively involved in social work. Even we support him because we know how lucky we are to have our children with us today. Rajesh is now a devotee of Shridi Sai Baba. He has recently donated 50 bicycles to the physically challenged, says Rakeshs father Vinod Kataria.

Varinder Bhatia

That was a flight of captivity. Today,I took a flight of freedom

U. Balakrishnan Bhatt

This Thursday,U. Balakrishnan Bhatt took a flight of freedom. Flying out from Ahmedabad back to Bangalore at 5.15 p.m. was his way of remembering his flight of captivity 10 years agoit was at 5.15 p.m. that ic-814 took off from Kathmandu with Bhat and 179 other passengers on board.

Bhatt,who graduated from Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad,in 1969,was in the city to attend an IIM-alumni meet and to deliver a talk on the hijack to the Ahmedabad Management Association. Bhatt has also documented his account in his book,Terror on Board.

Back in the 90s,Bhatt,a management consultant,worked on a project with a Nepal-based brewery and often travelled to Kathmandu on work. That year,he was returning on IC-814 from a business trip when it was hijacked.

When the hijackers took over the plane,Bhatt first thought it was for a movie shoot. But it soon became clear that the terrorists meant business. Once he realised this was no film shoot,Bhatt decided to record all that was happening around him. He didnt have a notepad so he started taking down notes on whatever scraps of papers he hadeven on the hotel bills he was carrying and his boarding pass. All those notes went into the book he wrote after his release,co-authored with another passenger,Sanjeev Sharma.

Over the years,Bhatt has lost touch with Sharma as he has with a group of eight passengers from Tamil Nadu who called him Talaivar leader in Tamil for translating the hijackers orders for them.

I even spoke to two of the hijackers. They asked me why I wanted to talk to them and question them, he says.

His family,meanwhile,spent anxious days in Delhi,trying to get as much information as they could. His wife Shailaja,daughter Preethi and son Vikram,a student at IIM-A then and now a senior products manager in the US,were in shock till he was released. After his release,Bhatt has learnt to cherish his freedom more than anything else.

Amrita Didyala

I havent gone back to Kathmandu but maybe some day I will Yamini Kaur

YAMINI Kaur and her daughter are soaking in some winter sun at her parents home in Ludhiana. Ten years ago,the software engineer from Bangalore had gone to Kathmandu to take an exam and thought she would combine it with a vacation.

I had gone to take my Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEFL because there was no computerised exam in India. I persuaded my brother Vikram,who was a medical student at the Government Medical College in Patiala,to come with me because I thought we could have a good vacation in Kathmandu.

When on their way back,the plane was hijacked,Kaur says she felt guilty for having forced her brother to accompany her. The thought that my parents would lose both their children if the hijackers decided to blow up the plane was horrifying, she says.

All along,Kaur says they had no idea where they were. Even at Kandahar,we didnt know where we were. The hijackers had switched off the air conditioner and I was wondering which was this place that was so hot, says Kaur. My brother and I studied in Dubai and we could read Arabic and Urdu. Its when we read Ariana Airlines on the cutlery that we realised we were in Afghanistan.

As their ordeal stretched over days,they all longed to go home. The only thing I wanted to see was the red gate of my house. I wanted to be there, says Kaur. And after she returned,she did not step outside her home for almost a week before joining work at her Noida office.

The incident has left its scars. Every time I board a plane,some of that fear returns. Every December 24,my brother,who is a doctor in the UK now,and I talk about this incident. For a while,I was reluctant to fly Indian Airlines,but no longer. And every time I read the name Kandahar,even on hotel menus,I got scared. I havent gone back to Kathmandu but maybe some day I will.

But there are some happy associations as well. Of the many letters and emails that Kaur received once news of the hijack broke,one was from a colleague,Ravi Parkash,whom she had never met till then. He wrote saying that I would come back safe and one day,tell the story of this hijack to my children. After I came back,I met him and thanked him and everybody else who had prayed for me.

A couple of years later,after Kaur returned from doing a Masters in the US,she met up with Parkash again and they decided to marry. Now she tells the hijack story to their two children.

Amrita Chaudhry

We met first on that flight and are now good friends Romesh Grover and Sanjeev Sharma

Romesh Grover and Sanjeev Sharma first met on December 24,1999. In the eight days that they spent together as hostages,they became friends and over the last ten years,their friendship has only grown stronger. Now,they meet regularly over dinners and on festivals.

When I saw the 26/11 Mumbai attacks,I could empathise with the people who were there at the Taj Hotel and elsewhere in Mumbai. Its like dying ten times a day, says Grover,as he looks at the boarding pass he never threw away. The boarding pass,the clothes and the shoes that he wore for those eight days in captivity,are all part of painful memories that have stayed with him.

When they meet,the two friends often talk about those days. It was really scary. They would sometimes wake us up at 3 a.m. and say baraat me aaye ho kya,so rahe ho Are you here to attend a wedding that you are sleeping, says Grover,who lives with his wife and daughter Vatika in New Rajinder Nagar,New Delhi,and works in the exports department of a Hong Kong-based company.

Like Grover,Sharma exports garments and travels a lot on business trips,like he did to Nepal in 1999. Sharma,who also co-authored a book on the incident,Terror on Board,with fellow passenger U. Balakrishnan Bhatt,says the incident made him take his responsibilities more seriously.

Life means a lot to me now. After we returned home once we were released,I got a life insurance cover for my son,daughter and our family. I became more responsible and cautious in life, he says. For a few years,he avoided taking Indian Airlines flights. But both Grover and Sharma have much respect for the pilot of that hijacked plane,Captain Devi Sharan.

Four years after the hijack,I went to Kathmandu on some work and I finally took an Indian Airlines flight. I asked the air hostess who the pilot of the flight was and she said,Devi Sharan. I asked her to tell him that I was on the plane. Sharan came out and we hugged each other. We still keep in touch.

The memories of Kandahar may never leave them but both Grover and Sharma say they have moved on in life and are grateful they are with their families today. And they are hopeful that in the years to come,no one else will go through what they did.

Neeraj Chauhan

Now when we board a flight,we start looking around Arun and Alka Naithani

BEING SO close to death changes you. It happened to us for eight days and we have become braver now, says Arun Kumar Naithani,60,an electronics engineer who runs an electro-optical unit in Dehra Dun.

Arun along with five members of his familywife Alka,teenaged daughter Kanika,brother Rajesh,his wife Seema and their seven-year-old son Anshulhad gone to Nepal on a holiday.

Once the plane was hijacked,we remained calm as we were all together. We all counted on each other, says Arun,before claming up. We have put the incident behind us and moved on. We try to avoid mention of those days. But people keep reminding us of it.

But,says Alka,the incident has changed them forever. For one,we have certainly become more cautious when we take a flight now. The moment we board,we start looking around,checking our surroundings. However,the hijacking incident did help us overcome the fear of the unknown.

Alka says that while they all coped with the crisis,it affected the children in their family,especially Rajeshs son Anshul,who was seven then. Rajesh and his family live in Dubai now. He kept asking us,Why should I die. I have not committed any sin or crime. Why should they kill me? After the hijacking incident,Anshul went into a shell and suffered bouts of depression,but has recovered now.

Arun and Alkas daughter Kanika was one of the passengers the hijackers released in Dubai but she refused to go. She said if I have to die,I will die with you. All of us were touched by her spirit, says Alka.

Alka also remembers her conversation with one of the hijackers,Burger Sunny Ahmed Qazi.

He came up to me and asked me why I had not eaten anything for the past three days. I told him to sit down and listen to me. He sat down and asked me why I was not scared of him. I told him that I belonged to a family of freedom fighters and spoke to him about Mahatma Gandhi and his message of non-violence. He said I talked like his mother. And I said,all mothers think alike, she says.

Sanjeev Chopra