When
the flight touched down in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and I walked through the transit
gate to take the connecting flight to Colombo, I received the devastating
news on MH370 falling off the commercial radar.
And
the incident was everyone conversation at the airport from the cleaner to the
authorities I came across.
"You're
a Malaysian? What happened to the Malaysia Airlines' flight," was the question I got from the immigration
officer at the Airport.
With
a sense of numbness my answer was,"My knowledge is as much as yours. I
just got the news myself."
From
the moment onwards, my heart and thoughts, just like the rest of 30 million
Malaysian were with the passengers and their family members.
The
whole world indeed felt for the 239 missing lives and their family and friends.
Malaysians
living in India and New Delhi specifically were constantly sharing every
details of the latest development with regards to the Search and Rescue (SAR)
mission.
The
incident was widely covered in India, especially when the SAR started focusing
in the Indian ocean and that there were five Indian citizens on the ill-fated
flight.
India
was among the 26 countries that joined the SAR mission.
It
was a nightmare, as days passed without any sign of wreck, many of us had
sleepless nights monitoring every little update the Indian government was
releasing as well as press conference from Kuala Lumpur.
As
a journalist, I must admit twitter was my life line.
The
High Commission of Malaysia and Embassy of Indonesia here in New Delhi have
held doa selamat sessions and profusely recited doa's especially during the
weekly Friday Prayers for the Muslim community.
Hope
and prayers were the only thing we could offer from here.
The
Malaysian fraternity were saddens to see the government being
called,"murderer" and our Embassy in China being attacked.
No
country, government or citizen would want to be in such a spot.
Death can occur to us anytime. I must admit that it is
difficult to accept such a tragic incident, but it also not right to blame
anyone for which they did not have control over.
It
is an unprecedented event in the aviation history.
As
said by the Acting Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein,
history will judge us better.
For
now, the blame game and speculation will go on till there are solid evidence
and the though that it could have been the last conversation, the last hug and
goodbye will continue to haunt not only the next of kin but all of us all for
sometimes.
By M.Saraswathi in New Delhi
