THILINI LIYANAGE: A BRAVEHEARTED HEROINE 👩‍✈‍

In my leisure time I usually like to watch films as a habit. Till today I have watched a lot of films in different languages. Among them one of my favourite Bollywood films is "Neerja", which is directed as a tribute to Neerja Bhanot. I have watched this film several times because it's a heartfelt film based on such a wonderful brave true story.

In this post I'm going to write a little about this film. This biopic film is based on a real situation that happened in India. Neerja was a part time model. Also she was one of the airline crew members. She worked in an Indian flight named as "Pan AM 73" flight. In 1986 this flight arrived from Mumbai to New York and was hijacked by a gang of four terrorists in transit at Jinnah International Airport. They came into the flight dressed as security guards. Within a few minutes Neerja was the one who recognized these terrorists. 22 years old bravehearted air hostess Neerja, took it upon to save the passengers from gunned persons.

Throughout this horrifying situation, she never gave a chance to show her fear towards them. This gang's target was the Americans in the flight. They instructed Neerja to collect all the passports of those passengers. She used her courage and effort to protect all the passengers by hiding Americans' passports under the seats. With her help many Americans got a chance to save their lives. Other than Americans there were small children, pregnant ladies, young-old foreign passengers also. Everyone was shocked and scared because of the behavior of this gang. They didn't give a chance to distribute meals. After an argument between Neerja and the gang she got a chance to serve meals. While she was distributing food she passed some messages to passengers with the help of other air hostesses secretly. Around 17 hours later they started shooting down passengers because they couldn't find anything until that moment.

Meanwhile the plane lost the auxiliary power and lights went out inside the plane. After that she got a chance to open the emergency exit door. She had a chance to escape first, but she didn't do it because she cared about others. Secretly she let passengers escape. Unfortunately one of the terrorists saw this and started to aim small children. She ran towards the bullets and protected them. Finally she took them to an emergency exit door. She was critically injured. Finally Neerja lost her life in front of the survivors. They were so sad. It was a sad moment for me too. As a girl I'm so proud of her.

In this film one of my favourite actresses Sonam Kapoor acted as the brave air hostess Neerja. Ram Madhvani directed this film as a salute to Neerja's bravery. When I was writing this, I felt like I was watching that film again in my mind.