CHENNAI:A few hours after news began spreading that pieces of an aircraft had been found off the coast of the Reunion Islands, K S Narendran posted a lone link on his Facebook page. Along with it was the caption ‘What looks like a part of the wing of an aircraft (could it be MH) washed ashore off the coast of MADAGASCAR!’
Just shy of a year and a half since Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 went missing, Narendran says he’s still figuring out how to do things without his wife Chandrika Sharma, one of the passengers on the ill-fated jetliner.
“At this point, it’s a little too early to say anything because all we know is that a piece of a plane has washed ashore and experts are speculating it could be MH370’s. We’ve had quite a few false alarms and each time it takes quite a toll on the families. So only when there’s complete confirmation that this is that plane can we think about what comes next,” he explains tacitly.
To drive home the point, he points to how families of passengers from China have issued a statement that they don’t want a 99% confirmation but 100% surety that this was the missing 777.
Though he was shattered when his wife and 238 others went missing and then shifted to the ‘presumed dead’ category, there are still families scattered across Malaysia and China who harbour a faint hope that their missing loved ones might one day reappear.
“It is so very important for people to know that the plane has indeed crashed and parts of it have been found because, there are plenty of them out there who still have a glimmer of hope that the missing will return. I myself do not have any such thoughs, but it is important for others,” he explains, touching on the need for closure and moving on.
And what about his personal closure? “There are two kinds here really, one where people finally let their grief out when they know there’s nothing left to hold on to and the other where they need to know what happened. For people like me, the second kind is imperative because despite the many theories we still don’t know what happened,” he says quietly.
Having worked his way through the grief and anger that must have besotted him after the sudden loss of his companion of a quarter century, Narendran has turned his attention to working things out on his own and completing their dream home in quiet Kothagiri.