Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been left in mourning after the Air India plane disaster claimed more than 240 lives on Thursday.
But one north-west London community, some 4,000 miles away from the Ahmedabad crash site, is feeling the impact more than most.
Twenty of the victims have connections to the same temple in Harrow, its leader has said, with multiple families now trying to come to terms with what has happened. Among those killed in the Dreamliner disaster are a mother and father who lost their son, a pilot, in a plane crash in France just a few years ago.
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Members of the British Gujarati community have been gathering to pay their respects and grieve at the International Siddhashram Shakti Centre, which is just tucked off the high street.
Speaking to The Independent, spiritual leader Shri Rajrajeshwar Guruji described the crash as a “huge loss”, adding that he personally knew of 20 people who boarded the doomed Air India flight. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed shortly after clearing the runway at Ahmedabad Airport, with a huge fireball appearing after it collided into a medical college housing dozens of doctors.
Mr Guruji, who is from the Gujurati region but has lived in the UK since 1993, said: “I have good communication with the people there, and I woke up to see so many calls. There were messages to say there has been a crash.
“The day before yesterday my priest who works here in the temple had flown from Gatwick to Ahmedabad on the same flight. He was on the same plane that crashed but travelling on the way out.”
After frantically calling his colleague who reassured him he was safe, Mr Guruji began receiving endless phone calls both from people on the ground in India, and from his worshippers who had lost loved ones or had known people on the flight.
“I had a message from a police officer from Gujarati who said the former chief minister Vijay Rupani was on it, he has previously worshipped here. I was then given a list of people on the flight from Indian police and I was checking the names, and I could see some of them were familiar.
“Then people kept calling me to say ‘so and so were on the flight’ and so I eventually knew 20 people personally who had been lost,” he said.
He then spent the remainder of his day speaking on the phone to the families of the victims, and contacting their wider relatives to inform them and to offer them support and comfort.
“One family, they have lost a couple, a mother and father have both died. A few years ago, three or four years ago, their son died. He was a pilot, his flight crashed in France. It was a passenger jet and he was the pilot. Yesterday, his parents were travelling back from India and now both are gone.”
According to Hindu beliefs, the process of cremation and scattering of ashes is a part of liberating the soul and bringing peace to the deceased. But the nature of the crash means that some of the victims’ bodies may not be found.
Police officers on the ground in Ahmedabad have described the scene as “chaos” in their calls to Mr Guruji, and he remains in close contact with relatives and spiritual leaders in Gujurati.
Navin Shah, a retired architect and former Labour chair of the London Assembly, worships at the Harrow temple. He was horrified by the crash that destroyed a densely populated area near his hometown.
Having been born and raised less than 10 miles from the crash site, Mr Shah is intimately familiar with the area. He lived there for 15 years before moving to the UK and shared his concerns that the number of dead on the ground remains unknown.
“We know that the plane crashed into a housing complex called Meghani Nagar, but I understand there was a slum, a hutted area, with poor people living there. If they have been wiped out, that’s another factor that deeply concerns me,” he said.
Mr Shah first received a call at 8.30am from his nephew, who lives just four miles away from the airport, who informed him of the tragedy.
Soon afterwards, he realised that the majority of those killed had connections to areas such as Harrow, Brent, and Leicester, and that his community would be disproportionately affected.
“We had a prayer at the temple last night and I met a young man, 20 years old, whose grandparents had perished in the plane,” Mr Shah said.
“I was speechless, I didn’t have the heart to express my feelings – I pretty much broke down. One young lady had lost her father-in-law and she was crying away. It’s all very raw at the moment.”
Over the coming days, services and prayers are due to be held at the Harrow centre, including an inter-faith ceremony on Saturday to commemorate the dead.
