Review: Life After MH370: Journeying Through a Void

Life After MH370: Journeying Through a Void by K.S. Narendran
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

After 4 years, we do not yet know what happened to Malaysian airlines flight 370. The author Narendran’s wife Chandrika was on the flight (travelling to Mongolia for a FAO conference) and this is his story of coping with and moving on with life since the day the flight disappeared. I still remember the initial hours and days – there was a sense of bewilderment and shock – how can a plane possibly disappear. Narendran recounts those early hours and days – where the heart wanted to hold on to hope. And yet as time passed, it became clear that passengers were not coming back.

Adding to the tragedy was Malaysian Airlines confused and at times insensitive handling in the immediate few hours and days. The announcement that the airline had crashed, made by the Malaysian government was both abrupt and offered no reasoning on why they believed that to be the case. With the large majority of the passengers being Chinese and Malaysian, at least initially, there was support and interest among those nations. That was not quite the case in India, as there were only 5 Indian passengers on the flight, and the government was nearly the end of its term and battling other issues. Narendran gives credit to the support received from the Indian consulate in Malaysia. After a period of sustained search by Australia, the interest slowly ebbed. Inmarsat data was the basis for the entire search effort, raising the question on whether it was right to trust it as the sole source.

Narendran takes us into his personal life and innermost thoughts as he describes the struggle he and his daughter Meghna have faced to come to terms with the tragedy and move on. Questions on what actually happened continue to torment the families who are impacted, who serve as as source of support for each other. It is as if life had slowed down and it was an effort to bring focus and interest in anything (such as the holiday home in the hills they had planned to build). And yet, as he discovers, acceptance cannot be conditional on finding the plane and understanding the sequence of events. There should be lessons drawn for aviation safety and passenger communication, but it does seem to have happened.

This is an extremely sensitive, intensely reflective and well written account of what life has been for Narendran, his family and all others impacted, ever since the disappearance of MH370.

Priya Kumar’s book I Will Go With You: The Flight of a Lifetime uses a scenario similar to that of Malaysian Airlines to discuss philosophical questions of life and I reviewed that at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....


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