Before you read this article, I want to warn you that there will be some spoilers.
In a time when violence and divisiveness are at its worst in our world comes an unintentionally well-timed chronicle of service to your country and humanity. As in the closing moments of the film “Neerja," we are reminded that there is no greater way to make your country proud than to do your duty, in spite of your fear, as Neerja Bhanot did. This definitely is a story worth telling.
The movie “Neerja” is a Bollywood film which portrays the bravery of a flight attendant named “Neerja Bhanot” (played by Sonam Kapoor). In September 1986, Pan Am Flight 73 was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in Karachi. Neerja Bhanot happened to be a flight attendant on that flight.
The movie displays the endless efforts she took to keep her passengers safe. Neeja was said to have alerted the cockpit as soon as the gunmen boarded the Karachi Airport, thus ensuring that the pilots deplaned immediately and nixed the intruder's original plan to get the aircraft flown to another country. After doing so, the terrorists used Neerja as their communicator from themselves to the passengers. She quickly realized that the terrorists were after Americans, so she bravely hid the passports of the American passengers. The movie did not only show the events that occurred on the flight, but the film also went deeper into the 23-year old’s character.
The film revealed that Neerja Bhanot was a victim of abuse as well. Neerja got married in the month of March 1985. After their marriage, Naresh Mishra was revealed to be an abusive husband, humiliating her, not allowing her to socialize with anyone and insulting her family for not providing enough dowry money. In the movie, the audience sees how the husband’s abuse left Bhanot miserable, depressed and tormented.
But what got her through her marriage, was the encouragement and support of her parents. In fact, in the movie, we were shown two parents who simply loved and supported their child unconditionally like any other parent would. As the father continuously tells their daughter in the movie “Stay strong, it solves every situation." In the movie, there is a scene in which the terrorist is banging on the door of the bathroom on the plane and threatening Neerja. The movie relates back to her experience of abuse with her husband, and we see Neerja recollecting everything her father told her in those very moments of her.
“Stay strong; it solves every situation. Secondly, don’t ever do or tolerate something that’s wrong," Neerja’s father said in the movie
Sadly, Neerja Bhanot was brutally shot on the flight as she aided in directing 360 passengers to safety. Personally, I am not crazy about Bollywood movies. But this movie was not just any other Bollywood movie with big dance numbers and plot-twist climaxes. This movie was a story about a woman who proved her bravery and heroism in the face of death for the lives of others. A woman who chose compassion over cowardice and performed her duty till the very end.
