I am sitting in my daughter’s college library, waiting for her to finish her classes and join me so we can spend sometime together to ponder next steps—it is strange and unsettling. It is two days since it was announced and settled ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that MH370 has ended in the Indian Ocean and no one has survived.

Many have asked me what my plans are. The short answer is ‘I don’t know’. I know broadly what today will be about. And it is subject to change. How long will I be in Delhi? As long as it is needed. As long as my daughter feels the need to have me around. What will I do being in Delhi? I don’t know. Perhaps write when I find time and feel inclined. Or carry on conversations with family and friends. There are any number of inner dialogues while walking, talking, resting, and when I am otherwise restless with this phase of no clarity, no plans, and nothing engaging to look forward to.

I have received numerous messages of support from a large number of people near and far. What is hardest to receive are condolences. While I was acutely aware of the dwindling probability that Chandrika will come back, it did feel that the manner in which the fate of MH370 was determined left me quite angry and incredulous. To ask people to accept findings based on ‘never-before-done analysis’ shared through a press statement—telegraphic at best—seemed premature. We are talking about earth, not the fate of a rover on Mars, or some other object of interest in Andromeda, right? And speaking of which, our technologists seem more likely to be certain of happenings on distant celestial landing sites and spectacle than what is happening in the immediate world around them. So we are to settle our pangs on the basis of pings? Times, perhaps, in which to find our companions and our souls in virtual spaces and ignore the call for hard evidence that one can see, touch and feel as greedy and unreal.

It has been hard to cast away doubts and suspicions that the whole spectacle is part of a grand cover-up, a global smokescreen, expensive no doubt. But one also supposes that for some nations wedded to nationalist sentiment, no price is too large. A cynical, narrow approach to national interest and security helps obscure the truth, and sadly undermines collective security. One can’t put away the thought that much more could have been done, a lot quicker if preoccupations with ‘national security’ didn’t come in the way. In our times, it is anachronistic to assume that our interests kick in only if a fellow countryman was involved. They may well be the next time round, if not in this instance. So now is the time to sit up and join in. While much is made of our world as being intimately inter-connected, it has focused on economics as the principal driver, the glue, the mesh. Sadly events such as MH370 point to how much rethinking and redesign of the essential architecture of international collaboration is needed, security included. We can’t be global citizens by beefing up boundaries and shoring up the parameters that set us apart (‘No Indian was involved’; ‘No American lives were lost’, …).

One of the casualties of MH370 is the loss of trust. Can I trust a pilot or co-pilot? Can I trust ground control? Can I trust a co-passenger? Can I trust ATC? Can I trust that every time the aircraft swerves, it is smart-piloting and not sinister? Every time we hit turbulence, can I trust that it hasn’t started inside the cockpit? Can I trust technology to render me safely, place to place? Does someone know with certainty where I am when up in the sky just as certainly as my movements on theground can be tracked and pinpointed?

All doubts fuel hope as much as they feed the anguish of suspended belief and postponed action. To accept that MH370 met its end in the Indian Ocean may be easier for some of us who are inclined to be more trusting of the intentions of governments and technologists. For some others skeptical of the state, and the claims of technology, it is easier to stay with one’s own preferred hypothesis and demand the world to produce evidence to prove it or reject it. The hijack/kidnap/’alive-but-inaccessible’ argument keeps alive hopes for the return of near and dear ones. In these bizarre circumstances, we are willing to accept a situation as favourable, that in other times would be intolerable to conceive. It is in the space between these apparently opposed dispositions that I find myself caught.

The purveyors of hope would have it that it may be months, but eventually ‘hostages’ or the ‘presently inaccessible’ will find their way back home. So does one believe the Malaysians? Does one accept Inmarsat’s word? Do we have a location? Do we have the time of the flight’s end? Do we wait to have the reassurance of debris? Quite besides the irony of it all, it is hard to declare that it is all over, and plan for a fitting celebration of Chandrika’s life on 30 March, her birthday, and other events for people to come together in her honour/memory, when people near and dear to her reject the conclusion that has been presented. Acceptance of Chandrika’s end cannot be a partial/sectional thing. It cannot be demanded or forced. Beyond a point, it cannot be argued. One can’t put a time boundary to it. And without wider acceptance in one’s immediate context, is is hard to imagine carrying on as if she were gone.

While there has been much emphasis on the audacity of hope, and hope as the energiser of dreams and visions, the warm glow, the bright ray.… Perhaps it is time to also reflect on the atrocity of hope. I have come to see it as wasteful and unproductive. It locates us in a future whose assumptions are never too clear. I ask: do we need a basis to hope? It intervenes in the process of reckoning with the present with clarity about things as they are; it presents itself as a companion of the ‘miracle’ where we expect outcomes without our play/agency. It keeps us wedded to our particular hypothesis. It asks of us to put our faith in specific possibilities irregardless of probability. Perhaps I don’t understand it at all. For one who has long seen hoping as a cop-out, it is difficult to embrace it now, even if urged over the last two weeks to do so.

My daughter and I are more or less reconciled to Chandrika’s long leave of absence, where we have to carry on, drawing from our collective memory of what she symbolised. We are agreed that she may never be seen again.

After the initial days of the disappearance of MH370, I would say, after a fashion, that I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. In preparing, one doesn’t will the worst to happen as some superstitiously might suggest, just as in hoping, one doesn’t ‘reveal’ the aircraft. What I learn each day is that no amount of preparing equips one to deal with living life one day at a time, and having no plans or routines.

This post originally appeared on Facebook.