Making peace with dad’s killer

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They say that when one has a happy and stable childhood, it prepares you for all the troubles ahead. That certainly was true in my case. My father, Jahangir Engineer, was a man of many talents. He was a pilot with a keen interest in the

sciences, a brave soldier, a champion chess player, swimmer, cyclist and a body-builder. An imposing six-footer, he was known as a “gentle giant” and was a role model for all of us (my mother Millie, my elder sister Shireen and my younger brother Noshir).
My father grew up in Karachi before Independence and was part of a large Parsi family in which three of his brothers went on to join the Indian Air Force. They were known as the Engineer brothers.
My father joined “Tata Airlines” (that was to become Air India later) in the 1930s. He was inducted into the Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) during the emergency commission when World War II began. My father was no stranger to danger. Once, in 1941, his RIAF aircraft crash-landed in Bengaluru after a vulture hit the aircraft. He saw death from close quarters and considered himself lucky to survive the crash. After the war, he left the RIAF and joined the Indian Airlines.
In 1964, my father moved to Mumbai where he was employed by the Maharashtra Government as a pilot, while the rest of the family continued to live in Delhi. I was studying at Lady Shri Ram College. In September 1965, war raged between India and Pakistan. On September 19, we received a call from my uncle, who was then a high-ranking IAF officer. He told us that there had been an incident involving my father’s aircraft. We waited anxiously.
By evening, an All India Radio (AIR) bulletin confirmed the death of all those on board the aircraft. Among those killed were Gujarat chief minister Balwantrai Mehta and the pilot, my father. On hearing the news, my elder sister immediately clutched my mother’s hands. My brother went very quiet and I went to another room to collect my thoughts. There was no shrieking or wailing since we never believed in public expression of grief. We had told our father earlier that no matter what happened, we would always be brave. But our lives were never the same again.
A financial grant from the authorities in the wake of my father’s death helped us build a house in south Delhi on a plot bought by my father earlier. The next year, my sister got married and moved to Germany. My brother got a scholarship and went to England. It was just me and my mother. During my father’s lifetime, we had a lot of friends coming home. But after my father’s sudden death, life became very quiet. I completed my graduation in 1967, got married a few years later, and became a teacher. The years rolled on. I have two children. My mother died in 1981. Some six months ago, I received an e-mail from a functionary representing a private website. I was asked if I would agree to correspond with a former Pakistani Air Force officer who said he had shot down my father’s aircraft in the 1965 war. It was a bolt from the blue. I did not want to revisit the past and the brutal end to my father’s life. I did not commit to anything and said that I needed time to think it over.
In August this year, the request was made again. I have always believed in “listening when someone wants to talk”. We had nothing against this man. The war killed my father, not him. So this time, I agreed. Soon after that, one morning, I was deluged with calls from friends about news reports in various newspapers regarding an email that had been sent to me by the Pakistani officer. I switched on my computer in haste and there I saw an email from Qais Hussain, the former PAF officer, who said he had shot down the civilian aircraft piloted by my father, after orders from his superiors. Mr Hussain said that he grieved for the unfortunate loss of precious lives and wanted to explain how and why the aircraft was brought down.
Reading the email and its description of events was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. I realised it had taken great courage for Mr Hussain to write that mail 46 years after the incident, but it took me courage too, to reply instantly. One thing was clear from Mr Hussain’s mail. He had never forgotten the incident and wished it had never happened. I realised then that the man who pulled the trigger had not wanted to pull it. I also came to know that Mr Hussain had heard the same AIR broadcast that my family was glued to, on the day of the incident in 1965, and had then realised that innocent civilians had been shot down. I understood that he was trying to reach out.
I realised that Mr Hussain was not a cold-blooded murderer. I wrote to him, “Please don’t blame yourself. We didn’t blame you.”
That evening, on a television programme, I saw and heard Mr Hussain. In the days to come, he wrote to me, wishing me on Id.
When I look back, I feel like I have re-written a chapter of my life. I re-lived that agony. I may visit Pakistan later to see the Karachi neighbourhood where my father spent his childhood. I am a pacifist and hope for peace between the two countries, so that other families do not have to lose their near and dear ones.

As told to Sridhar Kumaraswami