On June 12, two videos went viral. Both had a touch of the surreal. The first one was of a plane taking off, like planes routinely do, and then, within seconds, descending unhurriedly, unfathomably, like a giant suicidal bird. This couldn’t be real; except that it was. You could feel the heat and horror as the plane crashed into a building and became a ball of fire. These things don’t happen, till they do. The second video was equally surreal, maybe even more so. You can see black smoke curling up in greedy swirls, and the occasional tongue-lash of orange flames. This is the compound, about 1.7km from the Ahmedabad airport, where AI 171 had crashed within 40 seconds of takeoff. You can hear people screaming. You can hear sirens wailing. And then the screaming becomes even more hysteric

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