In the wing of a prayer

‘God knows what happened to MH 370’ a few people said on Monday at work, in a spreading sense of shock. Today that is frighteningly laced with a sense of impending tragedy and translates as ‘I hope God knows what happened to MH 370 at least’.

Mysterious happenings always make headlines, but I hope for no reason such headlines repeat. For a global citizen, air travel is routine, nothing more.

You check in, fly, check out. Simple as that.

On those long haul flights we lean back and stare at the route map from the comforts of our padded recline-able seats.

Flying over the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean…Canada, China, Turkey, Oman, Afghanistan, France…

It is all routine.

To think the people aboard the MH 370 must have done the same, sends a shiver down my spine.

No one in their wildest dreams might think that there is a remote , no matter however remote, but a remote possibility that your mighty Boeing bird can just disappear off the face of the earth in a matter of minutes. Without a trace. Without a trail. Without a sound.

 

Global panic sets in. Countries pool in resources and do their best (allegedly) to find wreckage, a trace. Conspiracy theories spread rife all over the web. Endless permutations and combinations of speculative explanations are circulated. And after nearly a week still nothing.

The loved ones of the people aboard MH 370 have no option but to wait. Wait for what? It seems now they just wait for bad news or far worse no news.

Detaching ourselves for a minute from the emotional element here, let us evaluate. A big plane , on flight mid-air can logically only come down. If it comes down, it will land somewhere. If it lands somewhere we claim to have the technology and resources, the brawn and the brain to track it but yet it has not been found. Why? Simple questions with seemingly no answers.

And that is the mystery. The fact that families claim the phones of the passengers aboard has been ringing when they tried yet no answer, if true, suggests a catastrophe or a mass behaviour (the most hopeful scenario!). And this deepens the mystery.

Either way the loved ones wait for news, some news. And I hope from the depths of my heart they do get some news. I hope we all get some news about MH 370. I hope we are told MH 370 didn’t just vanish off the face of the earth ina split second for no apparent reason. I hope they will find evidence to explain what exactly happened to this aircraft. I hope to hear good news that the flight has been found with all aboard intact and alive. But if not that I hope there is some news, for the sake of the loved ones; so that the rest of their lives is not an endless wait for someone to return.

It is human nature I guess. We fear the unexplainable. We don’t like ambiguity. We fear we cannot figure everything out. We fear we may never know.

 

So be it.

I am going to hold onto my prayers, to know, for MH 370 and for the loved ones of all aboard.