MH 370 - The flight that never landed

‘Spare a thought for the man who told his wife that he is going to Beijing by MH 370 and now not able to come out of his girlfriend’s flat’

While I found this ‘joke’ to be funny at first and very funny a little later I also was a little hesitant sharing it with the others. Maybe because a part of me took the moral high ground and asked the other half of my conscience “will you still find it funny if someone close to you were to be on that plane?”

Like most others, I too have been following the news or should I say speculations surrounding the Malaysian airline MH370. I do feel for the family members of the passengers and crew in that plane but I must admit that it is not just sympathy that has kept me glued to this mystery.  The science and logic leading to various speculations combined with some wild and whacko theories make this an engrossing drama. The news channels (with back ground music et al) and the numerous expert opinions make it more fascinating and gripping than a well-conceived screen play of a thriller Hollywood movie.  Half an hour of CNN or BBC make us sound like an aviation expert. 5 Minutes of watching any Indian news channels make us believe that the news reader is an aviation expert or maybe even the super intelligent terrorist who reprogrammed the flight path of the plane. Somewhere along the way, we tend to forget the human tragedy and focus a little more on feeding our information seeking part of the brain and get caught up in the drama unfolding in front of our eyes.

Be it a Tsunami sweeping the shores of several nations or a bunch of poor miners trapped deep inside the earth we tend to follow these developments by the minute. With the electronic and print media more than thrilled to sensationalize these sad realities as ‘breaking news’ we desperately fish for that extra bit of information that could give us our 2 minutes of fame while discussing with friends. It could be the names of the tectonic plates that shifted to cause a Tsunami or abbreviation of ACARS system or the name a gas that affects a miner trapped deep inside. It can even be a name of the guy who found the debris of an earlier lost and found aircraft. Any unknown information that you can add to your lunch hour discussion can elevate you to the alpha dog status in that group.

Is learning about Tsunami or a hurricane wrong even as thousands of our fellow humans are swept or blown away by these very same natural disasters? Is learning about some of the aviation jargons and protocols wrong even as the fate of the passengers is unknown? Are we disrespecting the victims and their families by following such events like we would a well written novel? Are speculations more interesting than the reality?

I don’t think so. Maybe, it is just one of those unnecessary dilemmas that I somehow manage to manufacture in my head at every situation. While I sincerely hope for a miracle and a logical closure to this mystery I will continue to thank my stars for being able to follow this story and not be the story itself. I hope against all logic and wish that the passengers and crew of MH 370 are safe and alive, somehow, somewhere.

As for our friend hiding in his girlfriend’s flat. Sorry buddy. All we can do is spare a thought for you and maybe even laugh at your 'funny' predicament