New Delhi: On March 22, 2016, exactly a year from this day when three coordinated suicide bombings ripped through Belgian capital Brussels, a flight attendant found herself in the vortex of despair. Her photograph gained traction after it was picked up by major international news outlets.
In a yellow jacket, torn apart by the blast, revealing her stomach, a perplexed Nidhi Chaphekar sat in a chair. Her blood-streaked face told the story of victims and became a representative of the deadliest terror attack in the history of Belgium.
Wednesday marked a year since the blasts shook Brussels airport followed by explosions at a metro station in the city; 32 people were killed and over 300 more were injured. ISIS would later claim responsibility for both. The Islamic State would later claim the responsibility for all the attacks.
A year later, 41-year-old Nidhi recalls preparing for a routine flight to Newark, New Jersey. She had arrived a day before from Mumbai. "I saw the first human suicide bomb attack but I couldn't figure out what it was," she tells CNN.
"It looked as if something exploded ... I always thought it had to be a wheelchair with lithium batteries."
Initially, oblivious of injuries she had sustained, she tells, she thought of helping others, but a colleague held her back.
"The crowd started running towards all directions. The exit was on the right side there. And those who couldn't find the exit in that chaos they were coming rushing towards us. The cries. The people started screaming," she tells CNN.
Nidhi tells CNN that she cried for aid when she saw a soldier run past her.
"With the help of a person, I sat on the chair and I was finding it very difficult because I wanted to stop the bleeding of the left leg because seeing so many casualties around I knew it’s going to be a tough task for everyone and I don't know how long it would take for me to reach the hospital," she tells CNN.
Nidhi's injuries were severe, so much so that she was placed in a medically induced coma. When CNN correspondent Erin McLaughlin told her that the photograph had become an iconic image, a defining image of this attack, Nidhi says, "It was an awful scenario to accept. It was a very horrible moment. It shows the pain you have. Everything.”
“And that was the picture which gave hope not only to my family not only to my colleagues. Not only to my friends and everybody. That I'm alive."
Still recovering from the trauma that attacks subjected her to, Nidhi says she feels reborn. When asked what she wants the world to know about a terror-victim, she says she wants to tell people that "alone you cannot survive".
"Our survival depends on each other's survival. We need to plant the seeds of love and compassion," she says, adding that we need to water them with faith and relationship and reap the beautiful fruits of peace and prosperity.
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