Aditya Singh was living at one of the busiest airports in the world, O’Hare International Airport, for three months before he was arrested earlier this year. Singh reportedly boarded a plane from Orange County, California to O’Hare en route to India. Once he arrived in Chicago, he chose not to board the flight to his homeland over fear that he would contract COVD-19 during his journey. That was in October 2020. This week, he was cleared of his trespassing charge. How did Singh survive at O’Hare for three months? Singh said the kindness of airport travelers kept him alive. Passengers shared food and he had access to bathroom facilities. He came to interpret his time at the airport as part of his spiritual evolution. According to one report, Singh had a friend named Mary Steele who offered via text to help him buy a bus ticket from the airport. Singh responded, “I need to complete my karmic lessons that I’m learning here. Then I’ll be able to go back home to India.”
There is a lot to learn from Singh’s story. On the one hand, we see an individual who is making a choice to avoid vulnerability to sickness. This same choice still leads him to other vulnerabilities: Reliance upon strangers for his survival; risk of arrest and, arguably, exposure to the virus. The most compelling vulnerability, here, to me, is Singh’s submission to reliance upon strangers in the airport for support. The airport is a place where we are, to this day, operating under the legacy of the September 11th attacks. We still experience so many security risks and threats. Travel can be exhilarating, but also scary. Still, Singh chose to stay at the airport. It is there where he had his spiritual breakthrough. How long would he have stayed had he not been caught? Who knows. I would like to ask him. Singh’s story has brought Light. Coincidentally, the name Aditya means “descendant of Aditi,” the supreme goddess who, in Hindu mythology, holds up the sky and represents life, death, and rebirth. Singh’s actions, though leading to his arrest, have resonance in that they are reflective of difficult decisions that we make everyday in life.
One report likened Singh’s story to that of The Terminal, which was based on the autobiography of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who spent 18 years at Charles de Gaulle, the airport in Paris.
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RENATA SAGO 