One act of Courage that saved many..

Women are equal to men and should be treated accordingly. So does a special day dedicated to women really achieve anything? “Instead of a token of a day, if women were just treated with more respect throughout the year, the world would be a better place,” .

All through my life, women have played very important role in shaping up every aspects of my life right from my mother, sister, wife and friends. A daughter would have been wonderful. To a father, I would say, "Give her all the freedom you would to a son and bring out the best in her as you are only her custodian..She is the future". You teach a woman and she teaches ten and that is how the shape of this country is changing. She has stood in the background and made many men great achievers and now she has stepped out and making her mark.
A smile on her face lights up your entire world and a look from her eyes makes you a poet (Mere Mehboob meri..mere mohabhat ki kasam). She is still a mystery and she makes you move mountains , unleashes in you an unimaginable power.
This story is worth a million to remember on a special day. Happy Women's day.(08th march)

When five terrorists hijacked the US bound Pan Am Flight-73 flight at Karachi airport 24 years ago, and took control of the aircraft, one of the worst hijacks in aviation history, it claimed 20 lives; this was the largest toll in a hijack until 9/11. The remaining 375 passengers and crew members would not have survived, if the air hostess Neerja Bhanot, was not there.

Neerja Bhanot identified herself as one of the air hostess, who was held at gunpoint and announced that the plane had been hijacked. Unfortunately, the three-member cockpit crew of pilot, co-pilot and the flight engineer abandoned the aircraft, leaving 400 passengers and a 13-member cabin crew in the hands of brutal, thoughtless terrorists. Since Neerja was the cabin crew leader, she took over command. Neerja requested the passengers to be calm and obey the hijackers. She served coffee and sandwiches and her charming smile eased the tide of fear that had swept across their faces.

The leader of the hijack ordered Neerja to collect the passports of all the passengers. She realized that the Americans were the main target of the terrorists and in a brilliant move she discreetly collected all the American passports and hid them. There couldn’t have been a better way to confuse the terrorists. By 9 pm when the auxiliary power unit failed entirely and the aircraft was plunged into darkness. Fearing an imminent raid by commandos, the hijackers shouted now is the holy war!! They fired their AK47, till they exhausted the bullets. By then Neerja had opened an emergency exit and a pan Am mechanic opened another. She used all her strength to guide and push people down the chute and while shielding three children; she absorbed the onslaught of bullets into her own body.

She could have escaped by the emergency exit first, but the angelic woman gave up her life to save the innocents like a mother. Neerja was brave in life, brave in death. The only stewardess, to have commanded an aircraft and held the hijackers at bay, was an Indian.

Neerja Bhanot was born on September 7, 1963, in Chandigarh. Neerja was a very sensitive, deeply affectionate and an extremely decent person who believed in sharing with her people all her joys but not the jolts. She had well defined principles and there was little room for compromise in that area. She did her early schooling at the local Sacred Heart Senior Secondary School. When the family moved to Bombay, she continued her studies at Bombay Scottish and then graduated from St. Xavier’s College.
For her brave act India awarded her the Ashoka Chakra (Neerja is the first and only woman recipient of the this India’s highest civilian award for bravery).
She was also awarded the "Tagme-e-Insaniyat" (Pakistan), the flight Safety Foundation Award and the Medal of Heroism of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (U.S.A.). Neerja's family put her insurance money in a trust, 'Neerja Bhanot Pan Am Trust’, to which Pan Am also contributed an equal amount. Every year, this trust honors airline crew that act beyond the call of duty and Indian women who show exemplary courage as well as compassion for their fellow humans. Neerja died at the age of 22 just 2 days shy of her 23rd birthday.
And the survivors remember her bravery well:

The heroism of a young woman from India should stir the people of that nation and the whole planet to voice thanks as did Mirinda in The Tempest for a world "that hath such people in it!"

When the lights in the jet were extinguished and the ordeal approached its bloody end, Neerja again played a life saving role, Mitra said. The first reaction to the darkness came when a terrorist exploded a pair of grenades in the plane. Then a machine gun strafed the passengers. As Mitra ran to the exit door, Neerja, her uniform covered with blood from a abdominal wound, stopped Mitra before he got out of the door. "I was going to jump out but she said it was a wing exit and it would be too long a fall for me. She directed me to the rear exit and I got out" Mitra said. He later saw a man carrying Neerja in his arms out of the plane. The young flight attendant died a few hours later.

Hussain had come on a 3 weeks' vacation in Karachi during Id-ul-Adha holidays and was returning to New York. He was the first passenger to enter the plane, when he was courteously wished "Good Morning, Sir" by the auburn haired girl. In the Pan Am uniform of white blouse and dark skirt, Hussain would fondly recollect, the air-hostess was a facsimile of a celebrated Indian actress. He would identify her as Neerja and contend that the broad smile, to keep the passengers cheerful and happy, never left her face, through the unending, seventeen, tribulating hours.

With the hijacking of the plane, Hussain and the passengers were forced to sit on the carpeted floor. The undaunted Neerja continuously remained on her feet serving coffee, sandwiches and provided for every need of the entrapped passengers that was conceivable under the circumstances; at the same time, she would whisper comforting words in their ears.

Husain related that as the lights went out at in the night, he was herded with the passengers and as the shooting started, from nowhere his saviour Neerja had the presence and the nerve, to steal through the pandemonium of the screaming injured and the dying men, women and children to make a dash for the emergency door. Though fragile, Neerja, by sheer zest, it seems, single-handedly opened the chute. Hussain reminisced the farewell words of Neerja, to him and other passengers of "Get Out. Run" would forever ring in his ears.

Neerja was felled by bullets, when her silhouetted lithesome body was brutally targeted, as the light from the outside flooded on her, while she kept pushing her charges through the emergency door. In her last breath, the brave Neerja stumbled out from the plane to the tarmac, but collapsed as she was limping, before first aid could be rendered. Hussain told me that he learnt of the passing away of Neerja, when his brother Masood took him to the Edhi Centre at Kharadar on the evening of Sept. 6, with the sacrificial goat.

Among the lined wooden coffins containing the dead bodies of the Pan Am Flight, there was one in particular, that was the subject of admiration, about which the large crowd of Muslims and non-Muslims were praying. This coffin destined for Bombay, was tagged with the name and photograph of Neerja. Like many others in that hall, Hussain said that he too wept in homage, before the remains of that wonderful person. Hussain holds that Neerja was not the captain, and in risking her life, she went well beyond the call of duty.

Hussain contends that had Neerja opted, she could have been the first one out when she had to employ the full weight to throw open the gateway. Instead, she waited until all the passengers had been literally shoved by her down the chute, under the full impact of exploding ammunition. By the time her turn came. it was too late.

A year ago, Neerja had written to her father, "I will do you proud" and the brave girl has kept her word.

http://neerjabhanot.org/home.html