Kriti Mehrotra
With Netflix’s ‘MH370: The Plane That Disappeared’ living up to its title in every way imaginable, we get an insight into what is arguably the most significant modern aviation mystery of all time. After all, it tries to explore the reality behind what precisely happened to the international Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with the help of not just first-hand narratives but also real archival footage. Amongst those to thus feature in this production is Grace Nathan — daughter of missing passenger Anne Daisy Nathan — so now, if you wish to learn more about her, we’ve got you covered.
Who is Grace Nathan?
If there’s one thing Grace still vividly remembers, it’s that she and her mother used to be incredibly close despite the fact she was in England for the majority of early-to-mid 2010s studying law. “I spoke to her every day, sometimes for hours at end,” she once candidly told The Mirror. “I had one of my usual calls with her [towards late March 7, 2014, Malaysian time]. She said she was in a rush and she couldn’t stay on the phone for long because she was on her way to the airport, but we stayed on the phone for an hour… My mum told me she loved me before she hung up that night.”
The truth is it is not common for most Asian families to express their emotions openly, and the Nathans are one of them, so it did take Grace a good 10 seconds to say “I love you too” to Anne. However, she meant it with every fiber of her being, which is why she followed it up by asking her to have a safe flight, blissfully unaware the next call she’d receive would turn everything around. It was her high-ranking local Civil Aviation officer father, VPR Nathan, frantically urging her to rush to Kuala Lumpur because her mother’s flight had gone missing in the air while on its way to Beijing.
Anne was actually supposed to fly to China a week prior, but she postponed and booked a seat on MH370 for the early hours of March 8 as she wanted to care for her own ill, hospitalized mother. Of course, neither she nor any of her loved ones could’ve foreseen the impending doom, yet the worst part for VPR, Grace, and Anne’s youngest, Azelia Shalini, is the fact the aircraft is still missing. There was debris found across a few beaches in the western Indian Ocean from 2015 to 2016, yet sadly no body or key proof has ever been recovered to give the families of those missing some answers.
“The search is the big thing for [all us family members; whether local or international],” Grace once revealed. “We believe that unless the plane is found we will not know what happened or why it happened, and therefore we will not be able to prevent it from happening again.” That’s why she never hesitates to speak up on the matter, urge official volunteer parties or governments to continue investigations, and holds events to keep this matter right in the public eye. She doesn’t know whether she’ll ever get closure or not, but she’d determined to try for as long as she can to find her mother and to find out what really happened to MH370 on that fateful day.
Grace Nathan is a Criminal Defense Lawyer Now
Grace is actually an official spokesperson for Voice 370, a support group for the families which even organizes an annual memorial event in Kuala Lumpur while continuing to push for more inquiries. She vehemently maintains this is a live issue as one can not just say let’s forget about this disappearance because enough time has passed since there are 239 individuals still missing without any trace. She even believes someone or something needs to be held responsible, but she won’t ever get into conspiracy theories or blame games because what matters more at the end of the day is truth and real closure.
“I ask myself this all the time, why am I still doing this?,” Grace said in her exclusive interview with The Mirror. “Sometimes I think I have done my best; I have done my part. But I remember how much my mum has done for me and how many sacrifices she has made. I can’t give up on finding her, it is not a thought I can entertain.” Moreover, she recently also conceded she never refers to her mother “as gone, passed away, or anything like that. I am never able to sort of describe her in a manner which means that she is no longer with us.”
In other words, despite the fact Grace has gradually learned to balance her quest for answers and her individual life, there is still an emotional gap she can not fill until she gets some real closure. As for her personal standing, from what we can tell, the 35-year-old married mother of one currently resides in Selangor, Malaysia, where she serves as a Criminal Defense Lawyer, Constitutional Law & Detention Without Trial Attorney, and a Qualified Mediator & Negotiator. In fact, with nearly a decade of active experience, she’s actually a Partner at Sivananthan Advocates & Solicitors at the moment.
