As someone who spends her days listening to students, guiding them through essays, applications, and interviews, I often feel like I carry a little piece of each of their journeys inside me. I know what it takes to wake up before the sun, to study until the eyes ache, to keep going even when the heart is heavy and the mind exhausted.
That is why this tragedy shook me in a way I cannot explain. And no, I do not wish to talk about the crash. I want to talk about the students. The ones who were simply having lunch. The ones who had just left class. The ones who had promised their families a better tomorrow. The ones who had barely begun.
They were medical students, seated in their hostel dining room. Maybe someone was scrolling through their phone. Maybe someone had just spoken to their mother. And then, in the middle of that moment, something unthinkable happened.
A flight fell from the sky and landed straight into the place they called home.
In our Hindu Shastras, it is said that neither the time nor the cause of death is ever known. You may protect yourself from all that is visible, and yet what arrives can be stranger than anything imagined. A plane crashing into a medical hostel is one such event. You hear it, and your mind refuses to make sense of it.
What is even harder to accept is who we lost. These were MBBS students. Young minds being trained to heal. Futures filled with service, intelligence, and compassion. These were not just dreams. These were investments made by families, by teachers, by a country that needed them.
I often write for students who dream of flying away. But here were students who had chosen to stay. To serve here. To give back here. And if this is the end they meet, then what do we say to those who believe in doing the right thing?
This is not just personal loss. It is national. It is intellectual. It is the loss of brainpower, of energy, of lives that were meant to save lives.
In my series Inner Classroom, I often explore what happens within, not just in school corridors, but in the quiet spaces of the heart. The part of us where ambition is born. Where pressure builds silently. Where we bargain with sleep and promise ourselves that one day, it will all be worth it. This incident forces me to pause and ask; what is the shape of ambition when the world remains this unpredictable?
And somewhere in that same inner classroom, I have learned that while we cannot control the outside world, we can choose how we move through it.
Yes, we must still strive. But not at the cost of presence.
Yes, we must still plan. But not with the arrogance that tomorrow is guaranteed.
To the students who will never return to that dining table - I did not know you, but I honour you. I mourn not just your absence, but the futures you carried. The patients you would have healed. The research you might have done. The mothers you would have consoled. The countries you might have made proud.
And to those of us still walking our paths, still whispering dreams into the night — let this be our reminder.
You do not always get to choose the length of your journey. But you can still choose its depth. And that is what the Inner Classroom will always stand for.
Not just what we learn. But how deeply we choose to live.
Sheetal Bagaria is an essay strategist who guides students toward foreign education while sharing meaningful life lessons along the way. [email protected]
