Click to play videoKasaragod (Kerala): The Air India plane crash in Mangalore two days ago left 158 dead and it's being seen as one of India's worst air tragedies. But what makes it worse is the personal tragedies of close to 30 families from the district of Kasaragod in Kerala, some yet to identify the bodies of their loved ones.
A pall of gloom has descended on the Sulaiman household in Kasaragod. The younger son, 27-year-old Siddique, was killed in Saturday's air crash in Mangalore. Tragically he was coming home to Kerala from Dubai to attend his father's funeral.
Hanif Md, Siddique's brother, said, "When Siddique heard of father's demise he was adament that we shouldn't bury him till he comes back. So we were desperately waiting for him but fate had something more terrible in store."
Siddique's six-year-old son keeps looking at the local dailies filled with news of the plane crash. But he is ignorant of his father's fate. He thinks his 'abba' will return. The elders in the family don't have the courage to tell him the truth.
His brother-in-law Farooq said: "It is very sad for all of us. We can't put it in words. We have had a huge loss. I don't know how we will overcome it."
Fate struck a double blow at the Sal-Sabeel household too, barely a few kilometers away in Uppala. Siblings Mohammed Bashir and Abu Bakr Siddiqui had spent the last two decades in the Gulf, and were returning for their only sister's wedding. Instead, what waited in store for them was death. What's worse, their bodies still remain to be identified.
C H Abdullah, father of the brothers, said: "We had arranged everything for wedding and they were just coming back to attend it with all the things they had bought for their sister, but now my two sons have gone and I don't know what to do."
For many familes in Kasaragod, which have been struck by this immense tragedy, the pain of losing their beloved ones might perhaps fade away with time, but those families who cannot even identify the bodies of their beloved ones, this pain will linger for ever.
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