CHENNAI: If you’d asked 14-year-old Parameshwaran last weekend what the most exciting moment of his life was, he’d have promptly said that it was winning the National Award for Bravery last year. But on Monday night, all that had changed, “Helicopter ride was SUPER (he mimics flying with his hands). I never thought I’d ever get to fly in my life but now that I have, I want to do this again and again,” he says, the adrenaline from the ride still coursing through his young veins. When chopper pilot Stacy and her crew heard about how Parameshwaran pulled three people out of a lake near his village in Dharmapuri and saved them from drowning, they were amazed, “You are a superstar,” she told him. He smiled a lot more after that.Earlier that day, the Sikorsky crew had hosted Parameshwaran and M Maruthupandi, another boy who won the National Award for Bravery in 2008 for stopping the Vaigai Express before it crossed a broken section of track in Dindigul, on their helicopter and took them for a joy ride. “It was probably the most exciting 30 minutes of their lives and it showed on their faces,” said Shyamala Ashok, executive director of United Way of Chennai, an NGO which hunted for these kids and brought them here, to be given the Legacy of Heroes awards. Along with them were 10 other children from a home run by the Shriram Foundation.“You should have seen them in the air. Once we put the headphones and transmitters on and told them that everyone could hear each other, they really got it on,” said John Shuma, a flight engineer. So did the father of one, had to control them when the seatbelt signs came off? “Well, to be honest I only allowed them to get up and walk one at a time, so yeah,” he added with a chuckle.But this wasn’t the crew’s only tryst with Chennai’s kids. Earlier, they spent a whole session with a class-load of children from the Corporation-run Chennai Middle School in Arumbakkam. “It was as awesome as it was mad. Though we didn’t quite get each other because of the language distance, we got along just fine. They’re really bright,” said Shuma. Another crew member pointed out wistfully that there were definitely “a few engineers and pilots in there, but more than a few lawyers, for sure!”As they explained what it took to build and operate a helicopter to the kids, there was rapt amazement and quite a few gasps, it seems. “When they played a game where they were given everyday items and asked to pick one in the event that their helicopter crashed on a desert island – the kids surprised the air crew,” said Shyamala. Why? “Because they took stuff like coconut oil and convinced the crew that they’d need it to survive!”
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