The photographs are the first thing Prahlod Thakur sees when he wakes up. They hang on the peeling green walls of his small Ahmedabad home, beside religious icons and fading portraits. One frame holds his wife, Sarlaben; another shows his granddaughter, Aadhya, in a white dress, smiling.
Both of them were in the BJ Medical College hostel complex, less than 2km from the Ahmedabad airport, when an Air India plane crashed into it last June. The crash killed 260 people – 241 on the plane and 19 on the ground. Sarlaben and Aadhya were among those on the ground.
“A grandfather lost his wife and granddaughter in an Air India crash that killed 19 on the ground.”
A year later, Thakur still feels the loss as fresh. 'I just miss them,' he says. 'I see the photos and feel like crying.'
The family had run a tiffin service for doctors at the adjoining hospitals for 15 years, cooking and delivering meals across the campus. 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; when Aadhya needed the washroom, she took her upstairs. Moments later, the aircraft came crashing in.
Unlike most disaster sites, where scars eventually fade, 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; suitcases and clothes remain buried beneath dust, rubble and twisted steel.
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.'
Investigators are soon expected to release a report on the crash. In Ahmedabad, another question lingers: what happens to a place after a catastrophe becomes part of its daily life?