Air India crash, a year later. Two men and a phone call from London: ‘Kaise ho aap?’ | Long Reads News
For the last one year, that’s how almost every voice text, every call from Omar Ali to Savdhanbhai Chaudhary has begun. It’s a daily reassurance Savdhanbhai and his wife Ratniben have hung on to since June 12, 2025, when the Ahmedabad-Gatwick Boeing 787 Dreamliner carrying their elder son Kamlesh and his bride Dhapuben crashed minutes after takeoff, killing 241 of the 242 passengers on board. Over the grief-stricken days that followed, 40-year-old Omar Ali, Kamlesh’s Pakistani co-worker at a fancy goods store in London, and Savdhanbhai, a 48-year-old farmer in Thavar, a village in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district, struck an unlikely bond. Every day on his way to work, Omar Ali would call Savdhanbhai to talk — regular, everyday conversations about the weather, Savdhanbhai’s infected toe nail, the cluster beans he had eaten for lunch (“guar… what is it, what does it look like?”), Omar’s clean-shaven look. The calls and text messages have come without fail, every single day. “Hamein zara sa nakhoon me bhi dard hota hai toh Omar poochta hai (Omar calls and asks …
