While Romana made art her whole entire life, she didn’t make art her career until relatively recently. Romana shares that in her experience, arts and creativity weren’t always encouraged in South Asian households. Even as kids, art was something you did after you finished your math homework. So, she never thought of art as anything outside of a hobby for the longest time, until recently.

Romana’s journey to a career as a storyteller and artist was not a linear one. After completing an English degree in university, Romana first worked in the corporate world for almost a decade. Before doing art full time, Romana initially started a side gig called “My Mehndi Story” where she would do mehndi/henna in a way that would tell story of a couple’s love, for example, through adding song lyrics or city skylines into bridal mehndi. It took a while until she felt ready to delve into an arts career full-time.

Now, Romana identifies as a storyteller and does work throughout various mediums. What story is Romana trying to tell? She wants to “speak the truth about her people and her culture”.

In this episode, we talk about Romana’s journey into the arts, and how COVID-19 has impacted her and other artist’s work.

Make sure to check out Romana’s BEAUTIFUL new single, Holding Space. You can also follow Romana on Instagram @romanakassam.

In this episode, Paul and I talk about the day-to-day realities of COVID lockdown, and how quarantine has been impacting all of us. We talk a bit about Paul’s work in philanthropy, and how Paul got to where he is now in his career. Paul is currently the Vice President of the Canadian Association of Gift Planners, and sits on several charity boards and advisory groups.

Paul grew up in an immigrant household and like many, felt the pressure to have a high paying career. In this episode, Paul shares how the best thing that happened to his life and career was receiving the “gift of failure” in his early 20s, after which he discovered his values, and purpose, and ultimately built an incredibly successful a career as one of Canada’s top fundraisers. As someone who mentors daily (seriously!), Paul also shares insightful career advice for young people navigating their careers. We discuss the importance of purpose over passion, connecting over networking, the career secret of curiosity, and practical tips on seeking mentorship, including the “DNA of a coffee chat”.

Wow the world has changed a LOT since my last episode which was a few months ago. Its changed even in the past few days.

Moving forward, I’m going to pivot to focus on stories that we don’t see on the news. There are so many stories to capture during this historic time, and I hope this podcast will be a place to document them. I’ll feature stories of what quarantine looks like for different families and households. I’ll also be looking to talk about how communities are coming together to address the crisis we are in, and of course hoping to do so from an angle that is not usually represented in media, which TBH is pretty dreadful these days

Today’s episode, I admit is not focused on COVID response, but is someone who is doing incredibly fascinating work. His name is Harleen Singh and he runs an Instagram page that documents life in pre-partition India, with a focus on women.

I discovered it a year ago and was blown away. As someone who was born and brought up in Canada, I learned very little about Indian history, colonialism, and partition until literally a few years ago. Most of the knowledge I have of South Asian history has been from my parents or a few books or articles I’ve read that talk about this topic. When I saw his page, I was blown away. In our discussion, Harleen and I talk about how he has archived the history and lives of people in the pre-partition era. We also talk about the fact that his research focuses on Punjabi women, and how their lives were not documented since history is often written by men.

The photo on the episode cover is a colourized photograph of a woman peeking from the window in her house in Lahore. Taken in the 1870s by JL Kipling, it is one of the earliest domestic photographs of a woman in Punjab.

Check out Harleen's page on Instagram @thesingingsingh

This episode is an interview with my friend Adil Dhalla, who decided to visit India for the first time in his mid-30s, to learn more about his ancestry. 

200 years ago, Adil’s ancestors left India (Gujrat), and went to Tanzania. About 50 years ago, they immigrated to Canada.  Adil grew up here in Toronto, when asked where he’s from, Adil would always either say Canadian or Tanzanian. He never identified as Indian, despite a lineage of Indian ancestors. 

After 6 years of working at the Centre for Social Innovation, including as the Executive Director, Adil took a huge leap and decided to “retire” from that work. He left his job and asked himself what he wanted to do. 

The answer was: go to India. Adil bought a one way ticket and left for India in January 2019. 

Our conversation touches on many aspects of Adil’s trip to India: yoga, meditation retreats and letting go of “fear based” existence, flirting with cows (seriously!), reconsidering eating meat, and witnessing a professional hugger who has hugged 30 million people (Adil says it was akin to watching Beyonce on stage). We also talk about the ongoing legacy of colonization that Adil witnessed in day-to-day life in India. 

I loved hearing how Adil’s experiences in India transported him into a completely new mindset and perspective that we aren’t used to in Western culture. Adil closes by talking about how he’s already working to integrate the lessons he’s learned into his life, in both tangible ways like yoga and food, and the intangible things like building capacity for love. 

In this episode, I sit down with Ritu Bhasin, a renowned diversity, inclusion and empowerment speaker, author, consultant, coach, strategist. Ritu and I talk about what drives her to do the work she does. 

We start off the conversation about how the 1960s and 1970s saw a new wave of immigration to Canada, and how Ritu’s upbringing in Toronto and Unionville was shaped by the race-based bullying she experienced. Ritu shares stories of social isolation and feeling like an outsider growing up in Unionville, and how the intersection of race and class identity impacted her social acceptance as a young brown woman (ex. shopping at Biway when the other kids rocked Roots and Benetton). These experiences had a tremendous impact on Ritu and inform the work she does now in disrupting forms of supremacy. Ritu also explains the neuroscience of how trauma is kept in the body and can be passed down inter-generationally. We close the discussion by talking about the importance of listening to your body and using mind-body methods of healing. 

If you haven’t heard of Ritu yet, check out her book, The Authenticity Principle. I personally found it to be a very useful roadmap to identify situations where I am not being my most “real” self, and how I can bring my true self forward.  You can follow Ritu on Instagram, or check out her website that’s filled with free tools like blogs, videos, and free self-reflection worksheets to help you live your best!