Candid Ft. Shahana Jan

Today I sit down with Shahana Jan and we go everywhere. The colour pink. The weight of log kya kahenge, what will people say. The quiet rebellion of figuring out who you are after years of being told who you should be. This conversation is raw, winding, and full of the kind of honesty that makes you feel less alone.

Shahana walks in wearing pink. It’s a choice, she tells me, a deliberate one. For the longest time she rejected anything girly, convinced it was the only way to stand out. We talk about the pick-me girl, the one who prides herself on not being like other girls. And we both admit how much of that was really us, and how much was a story we were handed.

The pink dress and the pick-me girl

Shahana says she’s in the middle of rediscovering what it means to be a woman on her own terms. “I was continuously trying to be what wasn’t girly. I didn’t want to be a girly girl. I wanted to be different.” But as she’s gotten older, she’s started to question why. Was it rebellion, or was it internalised misogyny, the kind that teaches you that anything feminine is weak?

We both recognise this pattern. Humna’s spoken word piece ‘A Woman’s Story’ opens with the line, “you tell me I like red and pink before I know I like red and pink.” So much of who we think we are is handed to us before we have the words to push back. Shahana brings up a quote from Ethan Hawke that struck her: “I am a symptom of my time.” Not the disease, not the cause, just a product of the cultural water we all swam in. It’s a reminder to look back at your younger self with compassion, not shame. Unlearning is a slow, kind work.

The building with 33 floors

Shahana explains trauma in a way that has stayed with me. She sees herself as a building. At 33, she lives on the 33rd floor. The difficult things, the deep wounds, they live on the lower floors, maybe even the foundation. “I might not have the time, the self awareness or the patience to travel down 32 floors to get to the first floor,” she says. Life is busy, we’re distracted by all the rooms and drawers on the upper levels. But the healing happens when we make the journey down.

This metaphor hit hard because it doesn’t sugarcoat the work. It’s exhausting. It asks you to carve out time you might not have. And Shahana is clear that self-awareness itself is a luxury, one not equally available to everyone. The science of neuroplasticity tells us we can rewire our stress responses, but first we need the safety and the space to even try. That’s why some people never get to unlearn. And that’s not a moral failing, it’s a reality.

When your home stops feeling safe

Then we go there. Shahana shares a story she doesn’t tell lightly. In 2011, two men broke into her family home in Pakistan. She and her sisters were held hostage for 40 minutes. “My sisters and I were basically held hostage for forty minutes,” she says, her voice steady but the weight unmistakable. The men knew everything about their routines, knew her father was on his deathbed, knew there were no men in the house. The police later discouraged them from filing an FIR, implying it would only bring more trouble and shame. Two weeks after they moved back, it happened again. This time they tied up her parents and waited for the daughters to come home. Shahana and her sister arrived minutes after they left.

I won’t go into every detail, but I will say that this story changes the way you hear the rest of this conversation. Shahana doesn’t share it for shock. She shares it because it showed her, in the most brutal way, what it means to be a woman without protection. “I was never made more aware of my gender during that time than anything else. If I was a son this wouldn’t have happened. If we had more men in the house this wouldn’t have happened.” That helplessness stays with you. And it made her recognise that bravery is often a privilege of those with walls, guards, drivers, money. “To be brave and strong is also in our society a privilege for the wealthy,” she says. The girls from the middle class, the ones who take public transport and can’t afford private security, they carry the same dreams but face far greater risk.

I think about my own fear when I first made my Instagram public. The judgment, the questions about creeps and safety. My husband pushed me then, saying, “If you can’t do it then who’s going to do it?” He was right. If those of us with some privilege don’t step forward, we leave the road even harder for the women who come after. But I never forget that not everyone has the safety net that I had.

He lets me: rewriting the words we use

Somewhere in the middle of all this, we land on language. Specifically, the phrase “he lets me.” Shahana cringes every time she hears herself say it. “I married somebody who lets me do things, I hate that.” It’s a tiny sentence that carries a whole universe of power imbalance. It frames the woman as an accessory to the man’s story, someone whose freedom is a gift from him. And yet, it’s so rare to find a partner who doesn’t police your choices that we end up celebrating basic decency as if it’s extraordinary.

We try to find better words. Encourages. Empowers. Joins the partnership already accepting who you are. Not granting permission but standing beside you while you fly. Shahana’s husband, Gibran, often says it’s not his job to let her do things. That’s the energy we need to normalise. And we need to stop policing women’s anger, too. “I’m tired of being policed for my own rage,” Shahana tells me. When men are loud it’s passion, when women are loud it’s hysteria. If we want to be heard, we shouldn’t have to shrink ourselves into a palatable, demure version.

Imitation, algorithms, and the search for authenticity

Our conversation turns to the strange state of content creation. We’re living through an era where imitation is not just common, it’s rewarded. Reels and TikToks thrive on trends, on watching the same sound, the same dance, a hundred variations. It’s broken the monopoly on who gets to create, which is a beautiful thing. But it’s also flattened so much of what feels original. “You go through your feed and just like everybody dancing to the same music in the same way,” I tell her. It’s hard to find the creators who feel like real people opening their homes to you.

Shahana thinks of her own Instagram space like a home. When you visit, she wants you to get jokes, real talk, and a bit of pretty because that’s who she is. That’s the advice she gives: don’t look at other people’s houses, look at your own. What do you want people to feel when they meet you? Build from there. Shortcuts might get you numbers, but they rarely build the kind of trust and connection that lasts. I’ve always believed that authenticity isn’t a trend. It’s the only thing that still stands when the algorithm stops pushing your name.

Coming home to yourself

We end where we started, in a way. With the idea that you get to decide who you are, and you don’t owe anyone a neatly labelled identity. Shahana gets asked all the time if she’s even Muslim. She will never answer, not because she’s hiding but because faith is personal. “I may never share what my real beliefs are. That’s my business.” There’s a power in keeping some things for yourself, in refusing to perform your spirituality for an audience that’s already made up its mind.

This was a conversation about survival, about the quiet ways we rebuild after the world tells us we’re broken. About wearing pink just to see if you actually like it. About letting go of the pick-me girl and stepping into the woman you’re still becoming. I hope you leave with a little more compassion for your past self and a little more courage to excavate your own lower floors, no matter how messy they look.