A Slap in the Sky: What a Viral Panic Attack Tells Us About Our Fractured Public Life
Every few months, a video surfaces from somewhere in the world, a train platform, a restaurant, an airport lounge, a plane mid-flight. A person in distress, a crowd unsure how to respond, and one individual who chooses violence or humiliation as a response to discomfort. These incidents, while specific in time and place, point to a growing global phenomenon: the fraying of our shared civic spaces. As public life becomes more polarized, surveillance-driven, and anxious, the social contract that once governed our interactions—basic decency, mutual regard, care for the vulnerable—is breaking down. The recent incident aboard an IndiGo flight, in which a man slapped another passenger having a panic attack, is not an isolated event. It’s a mirror held up to our moment, where compassion is contested and control is misread as courage.
A man on an IndiGo flight suffers a panic attack. He shouts, flails, begs for the plane to land. Another passenger—calm, composed—responds not with compassion, but with a slap. The scene is filmed and goes viral. Reactions are swift—and split.
One side applauds the man who slapped. “He restored order,” they say. “He did what the crew couldn’t.” In a country where chaos is feared more than cruelty, the urge to control often passes for heroism. Discipline, not empathy, is seen as civic virtue. Mental health? Inconvenient. Disorder? Intolerable. There’s a thin line, in this view, between being disturbed and being disruptive—and once it’s crossed, anything goes.
But then came the backlash. Other passengers on the flight confronted the man who slapped. One shouted, “Shame on you!” Some offered water to the man who had the panic attack. Online, thousands condemned the violence. They saw not disruption, but distress. Not danger, but vulnerability. They saw a failure—not of one individual—but of collective decency.
India Today, Representational
And yet, even this backlash reveals the same troubling structure: a divide. Two sides on every issue. Two stories for every moment. "Us" and "them" again. The civic space is no longer shared ground—it is contested terrain. Who belongs? Who is a nuisance? Who deserves dignity, and who deserves to be disciplined?
This wasn’t just about one slap or one panic attack. It was about how we navigate discomfort. About whether the public space is built for solidarity or surveillance. Whether our response to someone in crisis is shaped by compassion—or caste, class, and control.
The passengers who shouted back, who stood up—not just against the slap but against the idea behind it—offer a glimmer of what civic courage can look like. But the fact that such basic decency now feels defiant tells us just how much the social contract has frayed.
In the air that day, a man cried for help. Another hit him. But it was the silence and shouting around them that told the bigger story—of a society struggling to decide what kind of public it wants to be.
This reflection represents one perspective in an ongoing conversation about our civic life and shared responsibilities. It is offered in the spirit of dialogue, not on behalf of any institution.