Thirteen years after surviving the Westgate Mall attack, media personality Shiksha Arora has reflected on the day that changed her life and the journey she has taken since.
Arora was at Westgate Mall on September 21, 2013, working with East FM during a children’s cooking competition when gunmen stormed the shopping centre.
What began as an ordinary Saturday quickly turned into a fight for survival.
Speaking about the experience in an interview earlier this year, Arora recalled initially thinking the loud sounds were caused by a transformer explosion before realising that the mall was under attack.
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She was on the rooftop with children, parents and grandparents attending the competition when the attackers opened fire.
“They threw a grenade at us; we were a group of 30 people, and it didn’t blow up. We saw it bouncing; that was my second life.”
Arora said her uncle was injured during the attack, while a young girl who had been part of her cooking competition team was among those who lost their lives.
She also lost sight of fellow presenter Ruhila during the chaos after they had been running together.
The call she made to her parents
The experience left Arora with memories that she says have remained vivid years later.
In a 2020 reflection on the seventh anniversary of the attack, she recalled calling her parents while trapped inside the mall.
She told them she was caught in a terrorist attack and said goodbye in case she did not make it out alive.
Arora said she continued to remember the sounds, smells and images from that day, as well as people close to her who did not survive.
The emotional impact did not end when she escaped Westgate.
In a more recent interview, she spoke about the trauma and survivor’s guilt she experienced afterwards, saying it took years of therapy to process what had happened.
Finding a different perspective on life
For Arora, surviving Westgate eventually changed the way she viewed life.
Marking the 13th anniversary on September 21, she described surviving as receiving a second chance.
“I am blessed and so lucky to do life again; I got a second chance at life since others did not make it out alive.”
She also used the anniversary to remember those who died and the families they left behind.
Arora said the attack remains a painful part of Kenya’s history and stressed the importance of continuing to remember the victims.
From a day of terror to a life rebuilt
Westgate also unexpectedly became connected to another major part of Arora’s life.
During the attack, she encountered her future husband, Salman Manji, although she did not know him at the time.
Manji was inside the mall helping casualties. Arora later saw a video circulating online in which he appeared and reached out to him on Facebook.
She has said she was in a dark place at the time and wanted to speak to people who had experienced the same trauma.
That conversation eventually grew into a friendship and later a relationship. The couple married in December 2021.
Thirteen years later, Arora continues to carry memories of Westgate while also focusing on the life she was able to rebuild.
