Manant Vaidya will never again hear the angelic voice of his 14-year-old niece or watch her younger sister perform folk dances at family gatherings — memories he’ll cherish as he grapples with the loss of six family members in Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash.What was supposed to be a dream March break trip to Kenya for the Brampton family ended tragically when the aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff near Addis Ababa, killing 157 people, including 18 Canadians. Manant Vaidya’s sister Kosha Vaidya, 37, her husband, Prerit Dixit, 45, their daughters, Ashka Dixit, 14, and Anushka Dixit, 13, and his parents Pannagesh Vaidya, 73, and Hansini Vaidya, 68, were among the victims. “It’s a huge tragedy,” said Manant Vaidya, 41, sitting next to his sobbing wife, Hiral. “She’s the only sister I’ve got. I lost my parents and I lost my sister. I don’t have anybody else.”The couple is still struggling to cope with the loss of so many family members, so suddenly.“The news came at night,” said Hiral. “Our phone rang like 15, 20 times.”A family friend broke the news to them, but they ended up going to the airport to get confirmation. “They had a list of the family members,” she said. “It’s really hard to believe that this thing happened. It’s hard to recover because we lost six members. And they were all very close to us.”Read more: A family, environmentalists and humanitarians: What we know about the Canadians killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash Canadians mourn plane crash victims of Ethiopian Airlines flight — ‘it’s really hard to believe’Toronto’s Ethiopian community prays for plane crash victimsFlags at Chinguacousy Secondary School, which Ashka attended, and Centennial Sr. Public School, where Anushka was a student, will be lowered to half-mast on Tuesday to honour the girls, Peel District School Board said i ...
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