Optimism expert from Lahore
Tanzilla Khan from Pakistan found an innovative way to buy her ticket to Bangalore. Having come here, she does not want the experience to end, says Vasanthi Hariprakash
Her status message on facebook reads: Gobi Manchurian. Followed by a ‘heart’ sign. Clearly, a sign of ‘love at first bite’ for a 22-year-old who tasted the deep fried delight for the first time in her life, on her first visit to Bangalore four days back.
“Back in my hometown in Lahore, Pakistan, they make prawn manchurian, chicken manchurian but... with gobi? Never,” says Tanzilla Khan. “It’s so delicious! This is what you call innovation. I mean, no hard and fast rules, just get creative with whatever you have.”
Trust Tanzilla to see innovation even in cauliflower dipped in corn flour. The communications expert from across the border is in Bangalore all this week as part of an international leadership seminar called Relead, being held at the Indian Institute of Management, where this writer was a speaker and a panelist.
Tanzilla exudes an energy that is hard to miss. She is wheel-chair bound, but the contraption confines her only physically; there is no stopping her free spirit. The young woman almost didn’t make it to India, this despite the organiser, Blue Ribbon Movement, waiving off her fees for the programme and week-long accommodation. Having got her visa two days before the scheduled travel date, Tanzilla was still short of money. She needed 1,35,000 PKR ( 67,500 Indian Rupees) for the Lahore-Bangalore return journey. She decided to raise the amount on her own.
“I sent a sms to everyone in my contact book on the phone. It read: Hi, I am Tanzilla. I can sing, Ï can dance. I can make you laugh. You can make me do anything, wash, clean, bake you brownies.. but you need to pay me for whatever I do. For I need money to travel to India for a programme.”
Later that night, a friend called and said: “Come on Tanzilla, tell me a good joke. And I can pay you.” Another one followed - ”You just have to hold up a banner of my Rehan school where you go in India. And that is 36000 PKR from my side.”
“Vasanthi, will you take a picture holding that banner?” she asks. The writer obliged gladly, hoping the donor would sponsor even more for her next trip to India.
“Yeah, it did become a joke among friends,” laughs Tanzilla, “but you know it also opened a lot of doors for me.
” So when she goes back to Pakistan next week, she has a lot of chores to finish: A motivational workshop at a university college in Lahore; researching two travel pieces based in South America; an article on Venture Capitalism (“I don’t know anything about it,“ she says.) for a freelance journalist friend. But Tanzilla is glad to do it all, because people made it possible for her to be in Bangalore.
Back home in Lahore, Tanzilla is known as an ‘Optimism Expert’. The kind that doesn’t see the clouds because she is walking on them. “I want to do a project around laughter,” she says. “Try to create situations, make people realise life is beautiful.”
Tanzilla was born with deformed limbs. “When my father went around giving laddoos to celebrate my birth, my own naani (maternal grandmother) told him: ‘Celebration? Why would you want to do that? First of all a girl, that too born with a disability?” To which my father said: “Don’t even mention that. All I want from you is this: When she grows up, I want you to tell her what happened today’.” And they named her Tanzilla –meaning Sent from God.
She holds no grudges against her grandmother who, she says, later pampered her the most. “That’s how things were in my country then;
that’s how they used to look at the girl child, till 15-20 years back.” And now? “Oh Pakistani women are very talented, capable and more educated than the men. That’s the reason why it is so tough to find the right guy to get married to!”
Does she then see herself single for long? “No, I believe in taking things as they come. The moment I find the right man, I will decide in an instant. I will hold him by collar, get him into the mosque and do the nikaah!”
For now, Tanzilla has no time for romance, she is too occupied by love for humankind. On the anvil is launching her own jewellery line, “not the usual jewellery. I want to build a brand that is about feminism. Like a wrist band that says Stand up, speak up. Maybe even ear rings that carry a message, that make women feel empowered.” However, education is her passion. “It is a huge bumpy ride to education. Pakistan’s current literacy rate is under 50%, I would like to see that going up to at least 90.”
Tanzilla is quite a Bollywood buff . “Bollywood, and television channels bind India and Pakistan,” she says. “But no matter what news anchors say on either side, I will not get swayed.
Of course, the first time when I was travelling to India for a British Council Youth programme that was held in Gurgaon, people at home did say, ‘Kahin koi masla toh nahi ho jaayega?‘ (Hope there won’t be any problem anywhere?)“
But from the moment she landed in Delhi she was overwhelmed. “There was so much love. What Pakistan and India share is something so unique, there is nothing quite like it anywhere in the world.”
Tanzilla was no stranger to Indian hospitality, even if it’s the NRI version. When she was eight years old, her landlord-armyman father had taken her to New Jersey in the United States where they stayed for a year to get artificial prosthesis. “There, my nurses were Indian. Mostly, Hindus. They never saw me as a Muslim, as a Pakistani. They were beyond all that. Our neighbours were Indians too; they were strictly vegetarians. Yet, ‘that uncle’ would go to the market, buy meat and cook it just so I could eat it.That was so overwhelming. Even at that age, I learnt that we human beings have a bonding irrespective of religion.“
Here in Bangalore, Tanzilla is beset with joy. “It’s getting so amazing every minute. I don’t want this to end,” she says, about her Bangalore experience. “
You know, Lahore is a food hub. If you come there, we have our own version of Italian and Chinese...yet, after coming to Bangalore I am surprised to discover that vegetarian food can be this great.”
Tanzilla and another young Pakistani delegate, Shelina, had to spend a long time at the Foreigners Regional Registration Office due to paperwork. About it, she says: “I would certainly like to question the system, but at the same time, I would respect the rules of the country.
I only wish there was a simpler way for Indians and Pakistanis to experience each other’s countries. I understand we need procedures, but Kasab didn’t come in through the visa channel, did he?”
Tanzilla Khan with other delegates and the writer (in yellow saree) at the leadership workshop at the Indian Institute of Management
Optimism expert from Lahore, Sunday Read - Special - Bangalore Mirror,Bangalore Mirror