near Shannon Airport, killing 329 people, mainly Canadians of Indian descent.

Shaila is a fictional character, living in the Indian community in Toronto, whose husband and sons were killed in the crash of Flight 183. She is portrayed as trapped between the Canadian and Indian cultures, not able to fully exist in either. In particular, she is trapped in the way she is constrained in emotional expression. She contrasts Indian ways of knowing grief, which include profuse public forms of sorrow, with the more reserved white Canadian forms of grief, but at the same time, notes that she never told her husband that she loved him (which would have been improper for an Indian woman) which is something white Canadians and a westernized younger generation do easily. 

In the story, many of her neighbors of an older generation retain Indian traditions and ways of knowing while the social worker Mrs. Templeton is traditionally Canadian. As Shaila begins to mediate between Mrs. Templeton and her neighbors and talk with Dr. Ranganathan, she begins to recognize that her place between the two cultures is not one of weakness and isolation, but a place of strength, from which she can assimilate and appropriate the ways of knowing of both worlds.