Yesterdayโs Air India tragedy in Ahmedabad, where 241 lives were lost within moments of takeoff, has left the nation grieving. For many of us, the news brought a wave of shock and sorrow. For some, it also stirred the memory of another flight, another heartbreak, from a time long past.
In January 1966, ๐๐ฎ๐น๐ถ๐ Mahajan boarded Air India Flight 101 from Bombay. He was 22, bright and full of promise, on his way to the United States to study engineering. He had a long journey ahead: Bombay to Delhi, then Beirut, Geneva, and finally London.
He never reached.
As the plane approached Geneva, it drifted off course and crashed into Mont Blanc in the French Alps. All 117 people on board perished. Among them was Indiaโs foremost nuclear scientist, Dr. Homi Bhabha. And there was Lalit, the only son of ๐๐ฟ. ๐. ๐. ๐ ๐ฎ๐ต๐ฎ๐ท๐ฎ๐ป, the legend in Community Medicine.
Six years later, Dr. Mahajan joined MGIMS Sevagram as Professor and Head of Preventive and Social Medicine. He served the institute for almost a decade, teaching generations of medical students and helping them understand the importance of preventive and social medicine. But those who knew him sensed the weight he carried. He rarely spoke of his loss, yet it was always there.
To keep Lalitโs memory alive, Dr. Mahajan instituted the Lalit Mahajan Award, given each year to the best student in Preventive and Social Medicine. He dedicated his textbooks on medical statistics to his son, as if each page might preserve what fate had taken away.
He managed, somehow, to keep going. But Mrs. Mahajan could not. In Sevagram, her grief lingered. It showed in her silences, in the faraway look she sometimes wore. The loss never left her.
The crash yesterday brings back that earlier one with piercing clarity. Two planes, sixty years apart. Two tragedies.
Time moves on. Cities change. Technology gets better. Planes get faster. But sorrow like this does not age. It settles deep in the heart, even decades later.
Let us remember them all. The ones we lost yesterday, and the ones who left us long ago.
