A few hours after she arrived at the Westgate shopping mall
Saturday morning, Radio Africa Group presenter Ruhila Adatia-Sood posted
several photographs on her Instagram account and linked that to
Twitter.
She was clad in a loose black top and black trousers with a blue and orange necklace completing the look.
Ruhila
was in the parking lot of the upscale mall for Sungold Sunrice
Superchef, a cooking competition sponsored by the rice brand, which she
was hosting.
She posted a total of eight photos on
Instagram, with her fans, with her colleagues and some of those who won
prizes with bags of rice in their hands.
That was her last activity on social media.
About
three hours after news of an attack on Westgate mall began spreading on
social media, the first Twitter posts about her emerged.
Of the many who lost their lives in the attack yesterday, Ruhila may be the most familiar.
Kenyans
are most likely to recognise her bubbly voice reading entertainment
news on Kiss TV, Kiss 100 and XFM. Perhaps as a sign of her popularity,
there was a page in her memory on Facebook last evening.
On
her Twitter page, Ruhila Adatia-Sood described herself as a “food
lover, thrill seeker and a bungee jump away from sanity.” “Always
looking for my next meal,” she also says on her profile on the East FM
website.
A fun-loving person, Ruhila is described on
the East FM website as a “TV presenter by day and superhero in the
evenings as I get you home in the traffic mess.”
She
adds, with a twist of that familiar fun-loving person that she,
“believes there’s not enough reality television. Farhan Akhtar (an
Indian filmmaker, writer, singer TV host and actor) is my hubby,
DiCaprio is my iceberg.”
A graduate of Rhodes University in Grahamstown in South Africa, she used to co-host The Rush on Metro East FM with Gupz Saund.
Ruhila
married Ketan Sood in January 2012 in what The Star on January 9 said
was a three-day Swahili-themed wedding. She was pregnant with their
first child.
In an interview published in The Star in
September 2012, the last-born in a family of four girls is described by
her sisters as a go-getter.
Said Farah Adatia Gomes:
“Ruhila loved reading, listening to music and watching TV though she
never really got to watch what she wanted as most of the time we used to
bully her into watching and listening to what we wanted. She was
charming and outgoing, always a leader.”
East FM, a
radio station whose target audience is Kenyan Asians, was holding a
children’s event at the roof top parking of Westgate Mall when gunmen
struck Saturday.
Information posted on the firm’s
Facebook page a few hours before the fatal shooting shows that the
occasion was the second round of the SunGold SunRice Junior Super Chef
Competition, the first of which was held at the same time and place last
Saturday.
The children competiting were to prepare a starter or main dish accompanied by a desert.
“We
are super excited!! Do join us on Saturday from 11am onwards at
Westgate roof top for the 2nd round of Sungold Sunrice SuperChef Junior!
See you there and do share this post!,” Kamal Kaur, an East FM
presenter, wrote.
Ms Kaur attended the event which she tells the Sunday Nation was “packed with kids”.
And after the competition began, Ms Kaur said they heard popping noises.
“We
heard what sounded like firecrackers,” she said, narrating how the
group then ran to the edge of the parking lot and looked over to see
people streaming out of the mall.
She then ran to find her son and they tried to get the children out through the Java service entry.
“One
man shot at my son, but he managed to duck. He was wearing blue jeans, a
black T-shirt, sunglasses and an Arabic headscarf (kaffiya) wrapped
around his head. He was holding a big automatic weapon, and I could see a
pistol sticking out of his pocket.”
East FM radio presenter Aleem Manji, who was also with Ms Kaur, was reported injured.
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