CHENNAI: When the aircraft carrying pilgrims to Muktinath in Nepal was about to crash on a mountain strip on May 14, L S Sudarsanam, did something heroic, said his relatives. “It fulfilled the purpose of his existence,” according to them. In the penultimate seconds before the tragedy occurred, the temple priest from Kumbakonam picked up two little kids who were seated nearby and embraced them tightly, shielded them from the impact of the crash and saved them.“When he travelled long distances to America and Europe to officiate rituals, God protected him. But ironically, when he was on a pilgrimage, his life has been taken away,” said teary eyed Soundararajan, the brother of Sudarsanam who, along with a group of relatives, collected his body when it arrived from Kathmandu on Wednesday evening. Sudarsanam hailed from a priestly family which performed the daily rituals in three important Vaishnavite temples in Kumbakonam. His daughter, Abhinayapriya, had just written her Class XII examination and was awaiting results. His son Sriram had been sent to Srirangam where he was being trained in Vedic studies. A friend of the victim, who spoke to Express at the airport, said the purpose of his trip included fulfilling a vow seeking good results for his daughter in the examination. The events that transpired on that disastrous morning was attributed to fate by those who came to pick up his body. Thirukoshtiyur Madhavan, the man who claimed to have headed the pilgrim group from Tamil Nadu and who accompanied the body to Chennai, said he had a miraculous escape as he chose another plane to make his journey.“Some 15 to 20 of us took one plane whereas Sudarsanam and others waited for the last plane. That was the one that crashed,” he said. The story about the priest saving the children was narrated by the air hostess of the crashed plane to Madhavan, who had survived. However, it is not known if the two kids were the daughters of Latha Sreekanth from Chennai, who succumbed to injuries sustained in the crash. Madhavan said it was the efforts of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa that ensured the body was handed over without much delay. “When the body was taken to the hospital in Kathmandu, the doctors and officials treated us with disdain. This was when our people here contacted the CM cell,” said Madhavan. Once Jayalalithaa ordered officials at the Tamil Nadu House in New Delhi to provide help to the victims’ family, the Indian Embassy in Nepal swung into action. The postmortem was then performed within an hour and the body handed over. “The entire priest community is thankful to her for the help,” the relatives said.
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