In the weeks that followed, the city’s attention slowly moved on. The ambulances left. The television crews did too. The urgency that had consumed the campus gave way to the harder job of the aftermath.
At BJ Medical College, life had to resume.
And much of the burden fell on Meenakshi Parikh, the dean, who had to keep the medical college functioning even as it grappled with overwhelming grief.
Looking back, she remembers not one tragedy but many folded into one: parents searching for children, students healing from injuries, her overworked staff and families awaiting DNA results.
“One part of me was occupied with what needed to be done,” she says. “Another was trying to understand what had happened.”
One conversation has remained with her.
A man who lost his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter refused to leave until he saw their bodies. Officials explained that DNA testing was needed to confirm their identities.
“My eyes are the DNA test,” he told them, insisting he would recognise his family no matter what condition they were in.
Parikh pauses when she recalls it. “I could see where he was coming from.”
Over time, the rhythms of college life returned. Classes resumed, exams were held and new students arrived.
As the anniversary, 12 June, approaches, the college has planned a prayer meeting, a blood donation drive and the planting of trees in memory of those who died.
Yet moving forward, Parikh says, is not the same as moving on.
“There wasn’t one moment when I felt I had processed it,” she says. “It was a gradual process of settling back into life.”
Back at his house, Thakur is trying to do the same.
He reaches for his phone. There is a video he often watches, recorded the day before the crash.
In it, Aadhya carefully feeds her grandmother a morsel of food. Sarlaben smiles.
Outside, another aircraft crosses the Ahmedabad sky.
Thakur does not look up.
