Live and Let Live

There are stories that inspire, then there are stories that shook you up and help you see the world better.

Earlier this month, I was on this Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Chennai. Flight journeys on surface look the pretty much the same. You wait till the destination arrives, find ways to kill time or at best look outside the window and gaze at clouds. Once in a while, I would wonder, what life will look like if you work inside a flight all the time. This flight seemed nothing out of the ordinary, I was restless to get home. I kept to myself reading through a book and said no to requests for meals or coffee from the attendants.

The carts went away, lights dimmed and someone touched my shoulder. "Sir, I noticed that you don't want anything to eat, Is everything OK?", went the flight attendant. This touched a nerve and we went talking about a range of topics. On what it takes to manage work and life while flying around all the time.

There is something about good conversations. By being present, through active listening, without any agenda or purpose, we learn. She talked about how working on a flight is actually very different than what I thought. It is not the same as I imagined, actually people change, weather changes, menu changes. As they say, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey and what happens in between!

She was talking about some remarkable stories before, during and after flights. How selfless they actually are that some of her co-workers even put their life at risk to serve customers. And she recommended I should read about Nidhi Chaphekar and Amit Motwani. They were both Jet Airways employees and were critically injured, during the March 2016 terror attacks at Brussells.

Over the last couple of weeks, I researched about them. One of Nidhi's pictures, which shows her in a state of shock was trending on twitter a year back. It's a deep message of shock, disbelief and trauma. They say an image speaks a million words, this image spoke a lot more.

What was more remarkable was how they reacted, Nidhi went back to Brussels and met the King of Belgium. She was also invited to the police headquarters in Brussels where along with a guard of honor, and she was awarded the title of God Mother of the Federal Police of Belgium!

A lot of people would have given up, after going through 15 degree of body being burnt, she had to even undergo medically induced coma to recuperate.

But she did not give up, look at those cheerful faces in the picture above now, this story reminds us of what is wrong about terror and what is right about life. https://twitter.com/hashtag/prayfornidhi?lang=en

It's amazing how we react to small challenges. I have been annoyed with small things such as traffic jams, insect on food, delays in projects and so on.

It just takes a moment to get inspired, there are a million hopeful stories around, listening with a smile is all it takes.

I hope to meet Nidhi and Amit soon through Jet Airways, and I will update this story at some point!

Till then, it's time to focus on the journey:)