Young Air India victim not forgotten

Bina Bhatt wanted to be an astronaut. She wanted to reach for the stars.
She was 15 and, like me, had just finished Grade 10 at North Toronto Collegiate Institute, a school where mostly white, mostly middle- and upper-middle-class teenagers went about their days without a care in the world.
Bina was different. She was the kid from India with the big glasses and the long black hair. Bina had a bindi. She was quiet, and shy and smart.
And I barely knew her.
It was June, 1985. Summer was all around. Friends were signing friends’ yearbooks, saying goodbye, and saying see you in September.
But we never saw Bina again.
On June 23, the shy girl with the big glasses fell from the sky off the coast of Ireland, a victim, along with 328 others, of the bombing of Air India Flight 182.
There was a solemn announcement at school. And that was it, adolescence kept on bouncing along and Bina Bhatt, for me — and for most of us, being self-absorbed teens — became a shadow pulling at the periphery of our memories.
Had she lived, she would be 40 now, a woman in mid-life. Perhaps even with children.
Thursday is the 26th anniversary of her death.
Bina Bhatt was not traveling alone, a crucial fact I do not recall from the school announcement. The trip to India was a family adventure.
Bina was born there. Her father, Vinu, and mother, Chandra, emigrated in the early Seventies. Vinu was a labour lawyer and a master mathematician. He worked at a cup manufacturing plant in Toronto.
The couple had a second daughter, Tina. Six years younger than Bina, Tina wanted to be a doctor. She would walk around with a stethoscope pretending. All four family members were Canadian citizens, and proud of it.
They lived in an apartment out near the airport, and did everything and went everywhere together. One popular destination was the girls’ aunt’s house.
Donna Ramah Paul is the Bhatts’ only living relative in Canada. She is not in the best health now, and could not be reached to comment for this story, but in 2006 she told the Bhatt family story to the Air India inquiry. Ms. Ramah Paul spoke of spoiling her two nieces. She would comb out Bina’s long black hair and pick Tina up from school and answer her constant stream of questions.
The girls were straight-A students. When Bina received a letter proposing marriage soon after her 15th birthday, her aunt told her to burn it.
23/06/11 Joe O’Connor/National Post

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Categories: Air India Jun 2011, Foreign Jun 2011, Safety Jun 2011