The Survival Story

Society of the Snow (La sociedad de la nieve, Spanish; 2023)

Director: J.A. Bayona

We have discussed this movie before. Check here.

This is yet another version depicting one of the greatest human stories about survival. On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 flew over the Andes from Uruguay to Chile. It was carrying 45 passengers on board, mostly Uruguayan rugby players. It crashed into the most inaccessible part of the mountain. Presumed to be dead by the authorities after failing to find them in their search-and-rescue, the 29 initial survivors were left to fend for themselves.

A few died due to their injury, and some in an avalanche that ensued. Exposed to the element and having no food to eat, they had to use the last of their survival skills, teamwork, and spiritual faith to hang on to their dear lives. When food became non-existent, somebody suggested that they eat the remains of the dead.

Initially, the passengers thought a rescue mission would ensue. After seeing planes just fly off and hearing on the radio sourced from the crashed plane that search-and-rescue missions had been called off, they became desperate. Caring for the injured, keeping themselves warm, getting food, and getting help were their immediate priorities.

The philosophical question of survival cannibalism played again and again amongst the survivors. On one hand, the thought of eating human flesh was repulsive. On the other hand, they were not killing another to eat them. They were merely consuming the cadaver, which will be consumed by creepy crawlies and bugs anyway. To put it to good use, like preserving the biggest asset to mankind, i.e. life, is worth it. Farm owners or cattle breeders are generally not too close with their flock, as they know their final destiny. Hence, on the flight, many of the deceased were known to each other. To eat the flesh of someone they knew must be in bad taste (pun unintended).

One of the survivors who refused to consume human flesh at all accounts succumbed, but he also had other physical injuries. Finally, the tenacious human spirit added with intelligence and a stroke of good luck or divine intervention*, two of them scaled mountains and ravines to finally get help. 

The movie's final moments end with some sombre thoughts. The emotional trauma that the survivors must have endured must have been enormous. 

When it all started, cheery smiles!

Out in the cold!

The actual footage during the final rescue in 1972.

* Does 'luck' or 'divine intervention' still play a role after all the passengers have gone through? It is natural to wonder whether it came too late.

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Death can be a satire?

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

Author: Mohammed Hanif

On 17th August 1988, President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan was killed in an aircraft crash. Perishing together with him on the Hercules C-130 military aircraft were the President’s close assistant Akhtar Abdur Rehman, American diplomat Arnold Lewis Raphel and 27 others.

In the rest of the world, a country owns an army. In Pakistan, however, its Army own the country. In 1976, Prime Minister Bhutto elevated ul-Haq to a full general. One year later, he deposed Bhutto and declared martial law. Bhutto was hanged for treason.

Ul-Haq’s 11-year tenure as the Supremo saw him announce Pakistan as a nuclear nation, aided Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and secured himself as a prominent Islamist leader. In a way, he was instrumental in making Pakistan a theocratic country and the rise of global Islamic terrorism.

The crash was extensively investigated by many quarters, but nothing was conclusive. The possible theories range from aircraft failure, as the C-130 was notoriously famous for faulty equipment, to sabotage by Americans, Soviets, Mossad, the Pakistani Army, and even Bhutto’s dependents.

Mohamad Hanif, the author of this book and the head of BBC Urdu service, was consumed by the crash. The interviews he conducted did not reveal much. The aircraft did carry mangoes. A rope was found among the debris. Someone suggested the possibility of explosives in mango seeds and the usage of poisonous gas to incapacitate the pilots as the craft plunged head down suddenly.

In most countries, too, something so sombre, like the death of a leader, is not sneered upon. This rule may not apply to Pakistan. Because of the restriction of freedom of speech, Pakistanis have volumes of jokes about their leaders. Every other day, even its immediate neighbour finds pleasure in mocking Pakistan. So, it is not surprising to read the humorous narration of the moments before Zia-ul-Haq’s demise in this light-hearted satire.

Even though the exact cause of the crash is not explained and the real perpetrators of the accident are not told, it seems like everyone had a burning desire to see the President die - the Pakistani Army, a Trade Union leader, the curse of the imprisoned blind gang-rape victim or a disgruntled soldier whose father was killed by Zia. A crow, possibly intoxicated by the nectar of the sweet Pakistani mango, may have a hand in it, too. The aircraft also carried such a heavy load of mangoes, so aromatic that it filled the whole vessel that the air conditioning need not be switched on. VX gas filled the machine when it was switched on later, and we know what happened next.

(Dedicated to RK, a Pakistani-Hindu from the Sindh Province, who paints a rather rosy image of his Motherland contrary to the perception of the rest of the world.)

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A test of faith?

There Mohammad was all up cheery in the morning. One more week, and he will be off back to his hometown. His sister was to get married, and he needed to earn extra cash to spend with his childhood friends back home.

Off he went answering the requests as the e-hailing app requested. The Klang Valley sun was getting hotter as the day went on. By 2 p.m., he thought he had enough. He would do one last delivery and call it a day. For his latest job, he had to ride to Shah Alam to deliver some foodstuff.

“Waze sends me through Elmina to reach, okay!” He told himself. “After that, I can call a day! After all, it’s his childhood friend Amin’s birthday.”

He was just reminiscing all his times from kindie to adulthood. After losing Amin to the many gruelling challenges in life, they rekindled their friendship through a mutual friend. They just did not have enough of each other. Stories of so many years cannot be completed in a single session. Tonight they plan to continue where they had stopped.

“What is that?” He asked himself as he spotted a white shadow on his rear mirror. He was just about to turn around to see for himself what the heck the white object in the sky was.

Boom!!! Before he could even open his mouth in awe, the white object came directly at him and hit him right smack. Wham!!! Even before he realised what hit him, he was dead.

That is how life is. This is a recreation of a freak accident where a Grab rider was hit by a private plane that went off course and crashed on a highway in Elmina, Shah Alam. Life is so unpredictable. Which motorcyclist. in his wildest dream, would be on the lookout to avoid a stray plane when he is riding on a Malaysia highway. It is a question of wrong place, wrong place.

JAL715 McDonnell Douglas DC8 aircraft
34/69 passengers and 8/10 crew died.
Tokyo - Singapore (via KUL)

Here is Mohammad doing all the right things, leading an honest life, then this. If there is a just divine force supervising all lives on Earth, it is undoubtedly doing a lousy job at it. The seemingly evil beings get scot-free, only to continue doing what they do best with impunity. People have the most diabolical answers for this. God loves the pure so much that He wants to keep him close, and living life on Earth is full of aches and pains. So death is a much-wanted relief from it all. Really?

Purists will say God works in mysterious ways our nimble minds would not comprehend. They tell us to look at the bigger picture of His greatness, whatever that may mean. Then, a group will quickly hurl insults of lack of piety after scrutinising his past, as if he is qualified to cast the first stone. This is as ridiculous as blaming natural calamities on human behaviour, e.g., decadence and earthquakes.

Yet another group will end all questions by invoking the law of karma. As if something intangible like sins of past lives can be argued, it essentially douses the amber of the need to find an answer.

But the flame of curiosity does not extinguish so quickly. In yet another revelation, somebody discovered a similar plane crash in the same vicinity some 46 years previously. Netizens will be engrossed in correlating these two events from all loose ends until another breaking news breaks ground. Then they will lose interest.

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What is the bottomline?

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022)

Netflix documentary

Whenever I see the tagline at a particular private medical centre that reads "We Care", I cringe. I tell myself that it should be reading "We Care, right! - Only for your money!" Somehow when a business entity says such a thing, it sounds ingenuine. More and more, we notice these foolhardy manoeuvres hiding behind informed consent and pages of indecipherable agreement terms.

Multinational companies move in with their big budgets and high-rolling executives to portray an image of purity and magnanimity, teaching smaller firms how to practise fair trade. In reality, they are no more than fly-by-night snake oil salesmen who would disappear at the crack of dawn. Over the past few years, the shenanigans of Boeing, the mega-conglomerate which made more than half of the world's planes, has come to light.

First, in late 2018, a brand new Boeing 737 Max belonging to Lion Air of Indonesia went plunging down into the Java Straits at full throttle soon after takeoff. Boeing executives were quick to deny that a brand new Boeing could be anything but faulty. They alleged, condescendingly, that the pilot did not know how to fly. 189 people perished.

Five months later, in 2019, another Boeing 737 Max crashed in Ethiopia. Soon after takeoff, with minimal warning, it took a nosedive into some hills killing all 157 onboard. The executives, this time, said that the pilots did not read or understand the flying manuals.

Only after their black boxes were found did a possibility of a significant design flaw be entertained. Boeing started cutting corners in their zest to stay afloat and maintain profitability after its merger with McDonnell Douglas. To continue the lion's shares in the aeroplane building business over its European rival Airbus, but not able to produce a new design, Boeing kept churning out bigger 737s. It introduced the 737 Max series with the MCAS system. The MCAS was a device working in the background of the array of plane computers to keep this big machine stable in the air. The trouble was that it had the power to control the ship independently, and the worse part was that none of the Boeings pilots was ever made aware or trained on MCAS.

In both of the cases, the MCAS sensors went faulty. The plane engines went rogue and just crashed with no chance for the captains to realise what went wrong and react. It all happened in mere 10 seconds.

The biggest worrying thing about the whole affair was that Boeing knew about their products' fault but maliciously decided to pay importance to money over safety. They continued denying culpability. This was discovered from the bipartisan Congressional hearings and extensive investigative journalism.

Boeing rested on its past laurels and long tradition of being the pioneer in churning out fighter planes in World War. It exerted its dominance by demonstrating a condescending attitude towards its Asian and African clientele. Even when China, some Asian and European countries grounded their Boeing fleets, the haughty Boeing did not budge. Even the American Federal Aviation Authority maintained no fault in the 737 Max. For the first time in American history, its President, Trump, of course, had the gumption to ground American planes on its soil with immediate effect.

The hearing saw an explosive revelation of a business with many shortcomings. Their internal memos clearly showed their realisation of a faulty MCAS system, but they continued anyway, placing profitability over safety. Its CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, was clearly disgraced in front of a gallery of gobsmacked pilots, the family of the crash victims and the world at large. The company culture of profit and deception over safety was bare for scrutiny.

The documentary narrates in an understandable manner the descent of a giant company that emphasises engineering marvels to spiral down the decadent rabbit hole of greed. Its computer generated possible imagery of the final moments of the ill-fated flights are just devastating.

For failing to recognise safety risks and allowing the company to cut corners to get the planes to market, the CEO, Dennis Muilenberg, was dishonourably sacked, losing Boeing's stock worth $14.6 million but not without his pension and stock benefits of about $62 million.

Boeing ex-CEO, Dennis Muilenburg

The whole fiasco only highlights a straightforward fact. The West has lost its fervour. The rest of the world has awoken to the demand of the new world's needs. Yet, the West still bask in the glory of its tainted history and gunboat diplomacy. For example, take space exploration. It used to be a big boys' club exclusively in the domain of select Western countries. Wham! Escaping West's radar, China quietly launched a spaceship to the dark side of the Moon without much fanfare, and India sent a vessel to Mars at a fraction of their cost. The West is gobsmacked, and naturally, they are resolved to bring the others down at any price, but they would not admit it but instead put up a rather nonchalant attitude.

Now, they cry foul. They complain about CCP's unethical practice, human rights and environmental degradation as if they were not guilty of these in annals of history.

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