[sadhuji]

The cat is finally out of the bag. The North Western Airlines flight NW0042, on its way to Mumbai, was escorted back to the originating airport in the Netherlands after the Air Marshals suspected a group of passengers of Indian origin to be having sinister design to highjack the Aeroplane. The so-called suspects were kept in solitary confinement for the duration. There were tense hours, hurried communications at the diplomatic levels and tempers flew. It was a serious affair because normally terrorists travel in tiny groups of twos of threes – but a huge group of one dozen was too much for the on board law enforcement agencies to swallow. All hell broke loose and a pair of F-16s escorted the Aeroplane till its touch down.

It now emerges from interviews via one of the popular TV news channels of the detainees, who have finally returned home to Mumbai that the problem was a case of jostling for attractive window side seats because the aircraft did not have a full load and there were plenty of vacant seats! Unfortunately, the Air Marshals had never witnessed exuberance of this magnitude before and suspected the worst. We Indians are accustomed to such behavior and, this incident should make us realize that these actions lower our credibility in the eyes of the World community.

Jostling for space in buses by college students is a common sight for us as also rushing in to board moving buses to reserve seats for friends – especially, if the friend happens of the fairer sex. We love unruly behaviors of this nature – but, a foreign country has its own sense of decent behavior. We should learn to control our natural urges and impulses on foreign soil – then, and then only, will there not be a repetition of silly incidents that can get blown out of proportions and create avoidable embarrassments.