The horror and tragedy of the Air India crash last week inadvertently became personal for me. Not because I lost friends or family in the crash, but because I was on an Air India flight to New York when it happened. Somehow, the crew of my flight had no knowledge of the crash and at JFK, the only thing Indians in the queue at passport control were concentrating on was the fear that they may not get into the United States. Donald Trump’s deportations and visa cancellations have made even ordinary tourists nervous.

The taxi that brought me into the city was driven by a fellow Punjabi from Amritsar and he did not mention the crash. He was more interested in telling me that he had been forced to leave India because the situation in Punjab ‘has got so bad’. This led to my asking whether he was legally in the United States, and he said he had a work permit and had been here for five years and was earning on an average $400 a day. Why would he want to go back to Punjab, where he would be lucky if his small farm earned him that much in a month?

Finally, as we headed towards Manhattan, my son called and said that an Air India flight had crashed and that when he woke that morning and saw the news in New York’s newspapers, he had been frantic with........

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