The photographs are the first thing Prahlod Thakur sees when he wakes up. They hang on the bright green peeling walls of his small Ahmedabad home, among religious icons and fading family portraits. One frame holds the face of his wife, Sarlaben. Another shows his granddaughter, Aadhya, wearing a white dress and smiling.
Both were in the BJ Medical College hostel complex, less than 2km from the Ahmedabad airport, when an Air India plane crashed into it in June last year. Of the 260 victims, 241 were on the plane. Sarlaben and Aadhya were among the 19 killed on the ground.
“A year after an Air India plane crashed into a medical college in Ahmedabad, ground victims' families still grieve.”
A year later, the loss still feels fresh. “I just miss them,” says Thakur. “I see the photos and feel like crying.”
Investigators are expected to release a report on the crash soon. But in Ahmedabad, another question lingers: what happens to a place after a catastrophe becomes part of its daily life? Unlike most disaster sites, where scars eventually disappear, at BJ Medical College grief has become a permanent resident.
The hostel struck by the plane still stands like an open wound. Its upper floors are ripped open to the sky, concrete hangs in jagged slabs, and a smoke-blackened staircase disappears into darkness. Soot streaks the walls, while suitcases and clothes remain buried beneath dust and rubble. Officials have approved plans to demolish the damaged complex and build a new hostel, but for now the wreckage remains.
Students pass the hostel on their way to lectures as aeroplanes rumble overhead every few minutes. For decades, the sound blended into the city’s background noise. Since the crash, Thakur says, it carries a very different meaning. “Whenever a plane passes by, we feel the same pain,” he says. “We don’t even look at the sky.”
For 15 years, the family ran a tiffin service for doctors at the adjoining hospitals. Their two-year-old granddaughter spent most of her time there, rarely leaving her grandmother’s side. Lunch was being served at the mess when the plane crashed. Sarlaben was working there and, when Aadhya needed the washroom, she took her upstairs. Moments later, the aircraft came crashing in.