While in Lucknow, Akshay and Nimrat also took the opportunity to promote their upcoming film Airlift, which is based on a true story of the heroic evacuation of hundreds of Indians stuck in Kuwait during the Iraq-Kuwait war. And with both, Akshay and Nimrat’s fathers having served in the army, the actors feel very strongly about the terrorist attack that took place in Pathankot on the intervening night of Saturday-Sunday, January 2-3, in which several army personnel, including an officer, lost their lives.
“It’s a very sad thing that has happened,” said Akshay, adding, “We lost so many jawaans there. I’m sure the government is going to do something which is going to be a very strict action. They should! And I hope that they also do something about the families who’ve lost their loved ones. It’s the most important thing. It was a quite an emotional moment for me when in the morning, in your newspaper only, I was reading one father’s comment that ‘I’m happy that my son did so much good service to this country’. It needs a lot of courage to say so in such a situation where you’ve lost a young son. Main toh kehta hoon, we are just reel life heroes. These army personnel are the real life heroes. They put their own lives at so much risk just to keep us all safe day and night, relentlessly, away from their families and loved ones for months. My father was also in the army so I can relate to them in that way. And that’s why probably I feel so strongly about our armed force personnel.”
For Nimrat, it was talking of her own personal experience as she had lost her father fighting the terrorists in Kashmir years ago. “It’s a very difficult situation when you lose your loved ones to line of duty in the army and it’s an eventuality that many families have to prepare themselves for,” said she emotionally. “It’s something that nothing like that prepares you for when it actually happens. My heart goes out to the families right now. And I really, really hope and pray these kind of incidents just reduce and eventually don’t happen in the coming times.”