MH370: Flights of Fancy

The copywriters who penned the slogan and catch line of this advertisement may be ruing that their words have acquired an ominous Cassandra like ring for the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight number MH 370. It all happened on March 8 and this Beijing-bound plane with 238 on board and weighing more than 200 tons managed to fox the wired and wireless worlds and quite literally vanished in thin air. It continues to remain untraceable and like breakers hitting seashore, there is no end to conspiracy theories ranging from educated guesses to downright ludicrous yarns.

Broadly they can be categorised into two school of thoughts - mechanical failure and sabotage, with an overwhelming majority subscribing to the latter. After all who doesn't like some high voltage drama. Within the sabotage school there are two sub divisions. Those who believe that terrorist groups may have hijacked the plane to an unknown destination or carried out a suicidal mission. The others point their needle of suspicion towards the pilots' character.

The former group buttresses their argument by pointing out that the two Iranians with fake passports were present in the plane. However, the fact that Iranians have little sympathy for Al Qaeda, as they happen to be Shias, punctures this argument. Some say maybe it is the Hezbollah, but then this Shia militant group has little interest beyond Israel and the Arab world.

A tiny minority is floating the theory that the Chinese minority Uyghurs may be behind it. The theory seems plausible as most passengers were Chinese, but they have little wherewithal to carry out such audacious terror attacks outside the Chinese soil. Some even believe the aircraft may be lying tucked away in some Central Asian republic, though one wonders whether they have such long runways to land a Boeing 777.

All these theories fail to explain as to why no terrorist outfit has claimed credit or demanded ransom. Terrorist groups are as publicity crazy as politicians and hence it is inconceivable that they would let go such a temptingly high profile incident like this.

There are also legions of conspiracy theorists casting aspersions on the pilots. The fact that the transponder, which provides details regarding planes identity to radar operators on the ground, was switched off and the presence of a flight simulator at senior pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah's home has them in a tizzy. They think he had some sabotage plan up his sleeve and carrying out his homework, with many smelling terrorism link. The fact that he was a distant relative of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim added ample grist for them to chew upon.

Then there is this small minority which believes it was a straight forward accident and discounts all conspiracy theories. The proponent of this theory is a Canadian pilot who wrote in Wired.com that an electrical fire accident may be the culprit. He claims that would have made transponder dysfunctional and the pilot may have veered off the normal course to reach the nearest available airport. It may be noted that the plane was carrying highly flammable lithium batteries. For Boeing this is something they can ill-afford as they had barely recouped from bad publicity over heating Lithium batteries in its 787 Dreamliners.

Now for the ludicrous - lightning, asteroids, alien attack, god's wrath and the like. But what takes the piece of cake is an explanation given by 'soul healing' expert which was even telecast on a Kannada TV channel. He had two people sitting on airplane type seats and hypnotised them into believing they were aboard MH370 and they uttered what they ‘saw’! I guess nobody can beat that.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Games Politicians Play

Now that much water, silt and corpses have flowed down the Ganges since June 17 it's now time for our netas to let their hair down and get immersed in political muck. The main motivating factor seems to be the forthcoming 2014 general elections.

The latest I heard was the Twitter war between Congress and BJP over the handling of 'Himalayan Tsunami' - it makes even the verbal duels in Saas Bahu serials look quite dignified. The Twitter savvy among both parties were busy trading hashtag jousts.

The ball was set rolling by 'Rambo' Modi and his clever PR plants, which some of our mediamen lapped up with a willing suspension of journalistic scrutiny. This set social networking sites ablaze. The keyboards of 'internet Hindus' had little respite as they got busy waxing eloquent about the Gujarat strongman's big feat of rescuing 13,000 Gujaratis.

This bubble of hot air kept circulating for a couple of days, but later came crashing down when some started asking basic common sense questions, which the erring journalists should have asked in the first place. Initially Modi and his partymen too kept silent and basked in the glory, but when things turned sour they denied making such a claim. Thus Modi acquired an additional sobriquet - Feku.

This is not to say that the country's grand old party (with its long history of sycophancy and hero worship) was a picture of poise and sobriety. With much fanfare trucks carrying relief materials were flagged off from Delhi by party bigwigs, only to run out of fuel and get stranded at Rishikesh and Dehradun. The drivers were not provided enough money (they were handed over a mere Rs 2,000 per head) to buy fuel.

The latest I hear is that some of the relief packets provided to flood victims have photos of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on them! Thus political parties are seeing everything through the prism of 2014 elections.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat