THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 5: CREATIVE GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
WITH FILMMAKER AND SCREENWRITER SHUJA UDDIN
CLICK ON THE EMBEDDED PLAYER BELOW TO LISTEN:
Melinda & Shuja
Background art by Austin, Texas-based artist Lauren Tarbel
Background art by Austin, Texas-based artist Lauren Tarbel
Creativity benefits from a diverse array of perspectives and experiences. The more creative inputs we have, the more we experience life and the world around us, the more stories and ideas we can observe, live, and share. In this episode, we talk with Austin, Texas-based Shuja Uddin, a screenwriter, filmmaker, and professor of media studies originally from Karachi, Pakistan. We discuss the diverse influences on his storytelling and creative process, from growing up in the bustling metropolis of Karachi, to traveling the world, to studying at Boston University, as well as moments of comedic impersonation.
episode video clips:
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full audio episode on youtube:
episode links
Tishna Films
Short Film: Article 370
Karachi, Pakistan
Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Author Robert Greene
Short Film: Article 370
Karachi, Pakistan
Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Author Robert Greene
episode transcript
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We view creativity broadly, and one of our primary goals is to demystify the creative process. I'm Melinda Rothouse, and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Today on the show, Shuja Uddin. One of the most important ideas in creativity studies has to do with drawing new connections between seemingly unrelated things. In so many ways, the creative experience is about melding and blending ideas, themes, stories, and moments of inspiration into an original form. As creatives, we benefit from having an array of cultures and experiences to draw inspiration from.
We benefit from being global citizens, and that's one of the main reasons I'm excited to bring you my conversation with Shuja. Shuja is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and a professor of media studies. He grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, and his work addresses sociopolitical themes both in his home country and more globally.
He's always drawn inspiration from all over the world, including Western pop culture. I started the conversation by asking him what drew him to film in the first place.
Shuja: So I think growing up in Pakistan, I used to watch a lot of Hollywood movies. And I loved Dennis the Menace. I loved Home Alone, I loved Batman.
So there was something that was quite different in the context of Pakistan, where you didn't have this kind of media. People weren't making those kinds of cinema or films. So that was a lot of that contact, you can say, from the Global North in terms of cinema, movies, content, music. And then as a kid, particularly during the 2000s when I was growing up, traveling a lot to England, to the UK, to the US you know, I would come to Houston, I would go to Birmingham, London.
So you'd see a lot of the culture that was there, and I would want to stay there. I always had this reluctance to go back. I was like, no, I want to stay here. I want to go to the comic book store. I want to go to Waterstones. I want go to WHS Smith. I want to go to Barnes and Noble. So I would love going there, reading comic books, reading books. And my mom would do all this shopping and I would just be at the bookstore for hours, yeah, just reading books. And over the years, I would say Japanese anime, and Manga was another source of inspiration. And so later in the 2000s I was way more into that. I was creating, writing manga, drawing manga. I was learning. I wanted to be an artist, like animator and I would sometimes take drawing classes and stuff. So that was a huge inspiration for me.
But I think what ushered this move towards really pursuing it and figuring out what your life's task is, was the death of Michael Jackson. I mean, all throughout my growing up years, Michael Jackson, as we know, was more of a caricature to us, especially in Pakistan. I wasn't exposed to his music to that extent that people in America were, or other countries.
And so when he died, they started playing his Thriller, Billy Jean and all of that kind of music. And I was just so mesmerized by the showmanship and it was very cinematic and movie. So that started, I would say, a conscious decision to pursue creative work. Creativity.
Melinda: Okay. Yeah. That's so interesting because it's like all these Western influences, maybe outside of the culture you grew up in, superheroes, comics, you know, rock stars, and now I know more recently you've also gone back to your culture, and the context you grew up in, in a way, in some of your creative work and looking at pretty serious sociopolitical issues in Pakistan and Karachi. You made a beautiful short film called Article 370 with your collaborator, Ibrahim Baloch, who I've had the pleasure to meet, about a young pregnant woman in the disputed Kashmir region. It's a beautiful film, and I know right now you're working on another script that has to do with water rights and corruption in certain neighborhoods in Karachi. So, how did your experience growing up there shape the kinds of stories you want to tell?
Shuja: Yeah, because you know, I grew up during post 9/11, and so you had a lot of terrorism that was happening. You had the effects of the war in Afghanistan that was happening. Then you had things like political violence, gang violence, corruption, crime, and then you had a lot of love. You had a lot of family, and so you grew up in a space which is almost like a gumbo of a lot of things happening at the same time. You're going to school, but also there's a bomb explosion. So how do you process these two information, but you also gotta get a good grade? So it was definitely like an energy that would come at you at different forms and suck you into it.
And so when I was mentioning earlier about traveling overseas, you wouldn't see that a lot, going to America or the UK. And so you would like to be in that space where this talk of creativity, development, innovation and all of that. So the irony is, because I'm Pakistani, my parents are Pakistani, we will go to these Pakistani spaces in these cities. So I was like, yeah, but I want go where the white people are. I mean, I love it. I enjoy the food and I love the people. It's fun, they're loving, but it's just like, I just don't want to be, as they say now, in an echo chamber. I want to be in a space where there are other ideas and learn and grow.
Melinda: Great. Well, you actually kind of perfectly anticipated my next question: So you traveled to Europe, to the US periodically growing up, but you actually came here to live when you went to Boston to go to grad school at BU [Boston University], and I'm curious how actually moving here and living in a major American city, attending grad school, how that shifted your perspective on creativity?
Shuja: It's changed my life.
Melinda: How so?
Shuja: I mean, so ever since I've came to America, and when I was in Boston, I would just expose myself to different experiences. So I would go to like a Sabbath, I would go to some, you know, Palestinian thing. I would go to like a Soka Gakkai Buddhist temple. And I would go like some salsa dancing, bachata dancing.
So I would learn a lot outside of the class too, including doing standup in Boston, in a South Asian Open mic, I would go there. And so, to me, those kinds of things really changed me because I was just getting exposed to new ideas. I was just soaking it all in, you know, I didn't have a lot of money. I was a student and my parents were paying for a lot of it just to be here. So I knew this was a privilege. And I wanted to utilize this privilege in an effective manner. So I wanted to like really express gratitude because this was a phase of education and apprenticeship, which I was excited to be there for.
Melinda: Well, and it sounds like, as a creative, that's the perfect education. You know, you have the formal education and then you have going out and living life in this place where there's so many opportunities and I think as creatives we do need to seek out those experiences. You know, in creativity studies we talk about divergent or associative thinking, which is making connections between maybe seemingly unrelated things. It's the seed of all creativity. Well, where does that come from? It comes from the inputs that we bring in.
Shuja: Yeah. And in my case, what excites me is this space would mean interesting personal lives mixed with geopolitical stuff. And that's what I loved when I was there. Cuz I could just be, you know, Latin culture to Jewish culture, to Arab culture, to Indian culture. But I can try to find a story within there. Like I love the Chinatown in Boston and I would go there a lot and I wanted to tell a story about this thing that happened in the ‘90s, some sort of massacre happened, and it was about the triads from Hong Kong and this and that. I was like, so cool, this place I'm walking, this happened. I mean, it's a tragedy also, but I want to tell the story. I just wanted to tell this story. And so it was just that excitingness of foreign and local. So that associative thinking, that worked for me, that that's how it works. That makes you unique.
Melinda: Yeah. I love how you said that, you know, in a city like that, you know, with so much going on, there's so many stories. So one story in particular, that I've heard from you, if you're willing to share it with us, while you were at BU, I understand you have a friend, a close friend who's from Singapore. You were just there MC-ing his wedding, and I want hear more about that, but I believe you posed as a Singaporean nationalist at one point? Tell us about this.
Shuja: Oh my God. Oh yeah, so the story is that my Indian friend that I met through salsa dancing, by the way, she had her birthday at her place and she invited everybody there. So I met this guy, Guanhua, he's from Singapore. I was like, oh, nice meeting you. Cool, yeah, cool, alright, take care, Buddy. Took pictures. Gone. The next day, I had some issue with my laptop, so I gave it to the BU IT department, and then all of a sudden I got this message on Facebook and I was like, Buddy, is this your laptop?
And I was like, oh, is this Guanhua? Oh, hey! And that's how we just became, awesome friends. And we started talking about politics and Singaporean politics and we said, you know, we should, and there's this lunch happening for Singaporean students at MIT. I said, you know, we've talked about this political stuff, now what if we just start a political party, troll them, go there and make our own flag, and just midway through the lunch, like come up on stage and I can pose to be a Singaporean because in Singapore they have Chinese, Malay, and Indians, and I could pose to be an Indian.
And I can go on stage and say, we need to go back to what our great leader, Lee Kuan Yew, wanted, to make Singapore Great, to go back to our foundations and the people--‘cause Singaporean people are very apolitical--it's a strict censorship and all that (I just recently visited). So they were like shook. They were like,
Melinda: Who is this guy?
Shuja: What is going on? Are we in a conversion camp? Like what's going on? Like and then, and we were like, we need to go back to our roots. So we did that and we did it one more time at Harvard. And so at Harvard, they had a sex education conversation about sex education in Singapore. So it was at the dorms in Harvard. Everybody was sitting and all Chinese Singaporean, predominantly Chinese Singaporeans. And I was there also.
Melinda: And Shuja.
Shuja: And Shuja. Who is Salim from Yishun, one of the roughest neighborhoods in Singapore. All right. And it was Salim.
Melinda: You had a whole backstory.
Shuja: I had a backstory created just for the thing. And so they kept going like, okay, how did you receive sex education in Singapore? And somebody's like, I went to Catholic school. There was Catholic guilt. Somebody was like this, and you, Salim, what do you think? And I was like, I learned it from the best resource possible, www.pornhub.com. They're like, get this guy outta here.
Melinda: Did they drag you out? Security!
Shuja: Well, I was like, there was tension in the air after that. And then my friend eventually revealed like, he’s not Singaporian. He's my good friend. And, and that beauty of our relationship. He would come to my standup and he went back to Singapore after I graduated. And he told me earlier last year, like, buddy, I'm getting married. I'd like you to be the MC of my wedding.
Melinda: And it all happened. You had a tough time getting to Singapore.
Shuja: That was, that's a whole other story.
Melinda: I'm gonna kind of go off book a little bit here, but I'm just thinking about the very first time we met. Actually, we were sitting in 24 Diner.
Shuja: Yes. Great place.
Melinda: Over in downtown Austin. You were telling me about a particular book that really influenced you. Do you happen to remember what that was?
Shuja: Is it the Dale Carnegie one?
Melinda: Yes.
Shuja: How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Melinda: Yes.
Shuja: Huge book, changed my life.
Melinda: How so?
Shuja: It changed my life in a way where I was as a teenager, very dorky. And not saying that I'm not still dorky or anything like that, but I was very shy.
Melinda: Dorky sexy?
Shuja: Okay, there you go. It's a new thing. Write it down. [laughter] So when I was a teenager, you know, I come from a very STEM heavy society also, and nd STEM heavy school. So to be creative and an artist and a little offbeat was not the sexy thing to do. It was more of a dorky thing to do. And then I wasn't that comfortable talking to people, especially the fairer sex, let's just say that. To then reading that book over one of my trips to England, on the train I would read it, and Dale Carnegie, and I would apply things to it, which were at times very awkward.
Melinda: Like what?
Shuja: Like, like complimenting my mom's friend's food in a way that was like not so genuine, like it looks forced, but over a period of time you learned certain things about that book that opened you up.
Melinda: Like complimenting people, making eye contact.
Shuja: Complimenting people. Eye eye contact was pretty huge because when I was applying for my undergrad in Karachi and we had this neighbor, she worked at a major multinational company. My mom sent me to her just like, “Help him out.” And, I was so nervous around her and she was like, look into my eye. And I was like, okay.
Melinda: The last thing a teenage boy wants to do.
Shuja: So that was one of those things. But when I started doing standup, that changed me a lot, I feel like that brought a new…
Melinda: How so?
Shuja: Because I was now in one room with tons of people, they're all looking at you, and I'm trying to make them laugh.
Melinda: I mean, stand up to me is like the scariest; I perform, I sing, I speak.
Shuja: Yes. You're great, you’re awesome.
Melinda: I do all the things, but standup is the thing I'm most terrified of.
Shuja: And I did it. And the first time I did it, I made people laugh and I was like, okay, so I can be funny. And I showed it to one of my professors who I looked up to, professor John Bernstein, and he's like, “You are funny.”
He was from Denmark. You are funny. I was like, that's it. On track. And so I kept doing it every month and I wasn't funny every month. And I don't know if I'm still funny, but that changed me a lot. And I don't feel that, I mean there is that nervousness, but it, I'm like, let's go and give them a show. That thing changed me. And that is what I take from Michael Jackson.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that because that actually, you know, I've thought a lot about; I was a really shy kid too, and kind of nerdy.
Shuja: Oh really? What?
Melinda: But I really wanted to sing. And I had to overcome my shyness.
Shuja: Yeah.
Melinda: You know, I would literally get up in front of people, my legs would shake, and my face would turn bright red. And yet, I still wanted to do it. And it wasn't like for the fame and glory; it was like there was something just in me.
Shuja: You want to express.
Melinda: You know, and, and it took me years to overcome that, but then so many years down the road, you get better at it. It gets easier, you get more comfortable with it. And not only that, like from a personality perspective, I think I was, you know, definitely inherently more of an introvert. And yet I've done so many extroverted-type things like teaching, performing, getting up in front of people, that I think I've also become more extroverted.
And really what, you know, introversion is about needing time to recharge.
Shuja: Yeah. Space.
Melinda: It's not necessarily being a social butterfly, but something about that comfort. You know, just becoming comfortable in your own skin, in a way.
Shuja: And do you feel over the years you've become more comfortable with your skin?
Melinda: Absolutely. For example, like here we are in a recording studio. When I would make recordings, like I studied classical voice and opera, and, I would listen back to the recording, and it was like, excruciating, because the sound I heard in my head and what I heard on the recording were totally different.
Shuja: Wow.
Shuja: You know, and, but over many, many years, I got used to the sound of my own voice, until they became one and the same.
Shuja: Mm-hmm. Yeah. People have that issue, like they, I mean, I used to have that a little bit, but what you're saying is exactly true, like over a period of time, stop having that difference between what you think you sound like and what it actually sounds like.
Melinda: Exactly.
Shuja: And then you accept it as like, that's how I am. And then you can have fun with it.
Melinda: Exactly. So speaking of fun, maybe this is the leading question, but what's your creative superpower?
Shuja: Creative superpower. Overthinking.
Melinda: Overthinking. [Laughter]
Shuja: That's my creative superpower. Yeah. But something excites me, and I just walk around a lot, super animated.
Melinda: Yeah, so an idea comes in your head or an inspiration and you're just chewing on it.
Shuja: Yeah. And it's, I just lighten up. And I see just, the potential of the story and the exploration of the story is just like, oh my - stop meee!!!
Melinda: Excitement. Yeah, well, I love that, and I've kind of touched on this in a previous session of the show where I really feel that, you know, creativity is connected to our life force energy.
Shuja: Yeah.
Melinda: Right? And so when we get jazzed about something, it lights us up.
Shuja: Exactly. And there's, I don't know if you have time for this, but I wanted to say like there's something which I learned from Robert Greene, which we all know intrinsically, but it's your life's task, knowing what you want to do with your life. And something with, you have all these pressures in life, you are working, you have other professions. As independent filmmakers, as artist creators, we have to do other things to supplement our income. And one thing that I learned is to protect and serve. But I would say protect and preserve your life's task is a huge thing where you're like very, you know, like a baby.
Melinda: You have to guard it.
Shuja: Guard it, because there are so many things that can take your time away from nurturing that part of your life, which is...
Melinda: So many distractions.
Shuja: It's like, oh, I wish I could have done that. Like, that's what I don't want. I regret like I wish, or, oh, look at them, they're doing it. Whatever. Like, no, just go and. That's what I tell my students. Find a way.
Melinda: Yeah. Great. Well, I wanna kind of make sure we touch on, you just started a film production company, Tishna Films, with a couple of collaborators. And I'm curious, where does the name Tishna come from?
Shuja: Tishana comes from, so my maternal grandfather, his name was Tishna Barelvi. Tishna is an Urdu word for wanting more, desiring more, to have a desire that is unsatisfied, to want more. It comes from the word tishnagi. And my grandfather, he was a poet. He was an Urdu poet, and I felt that this word tishna symbolizes both my desire to do more and to preserve and protect that life task.
Melinda: Yes.
Shuja: And to create, and tell stories, but also is a great way to honor my grandfather who was really into philosophy, education, he spoke Russian, a secret communist. He was, a lot of things that were going on in his life that he was a computer, one of the first few people who did work on computers in Pakistan.
Melinda: Yeah.
Shuja: And so he was all about books, reading. He wasn't a like a very career-oriented person. He was much more of a thinker. So I feel like he would've been proud of me to see that I wrote articles, that I studied in America, and like he would be happy to see that these developments happened. He passed away before any of that happened.
He passed away in 2015, but, just to honor that, I feel like it's important. So I started a company called Tishna Films, last year. And we made this documentary for The University of Texas, Austin, and the Texas system of care. It's called The Power of Connection, which is about the youth peer support in Texas, people who support at-risk teens who are suffering mental struggles and help them overcome them because they've been through the similar experience. So now they're on the other side. They're helping them, they're giving them a space to think. And youth peer support is a key thing that has helped a lot of kids.
So there was this one girl in Houston, Texas. Gabby, and she had a great support from a youth peer provider named Arianna. And so we made a five-minute short doc for that. And one of the great things was, the purpose of the documentary was to get the legislators and the powers to be in Texas to provide more funding to these kinds of institutions. Especially in Central Texas, where there's barely any of this kind of support. So I think it's important. And so I had a great time running a production company, to be in a producer role. Being a screenwriter myself to then go into a producer role and learning a lot just by going through it, building my own team. Great people I worked with, Devon Foster, Matt Rifley, Tom Santos, Tori Rice, all of these great filmmakers and artists in Austin that we worked together. We hustled and made it happen. And it was like a small knit team.
Melinda: And so speaking of which, how do you put together a team and foster creative collaboration?
Shuja: Well then you have to have Devon Foster on the team. [Laughter] Devon, if you're hearing this, wherever you are. So you have to have people who you get along with, people who share the sense of creative joy, who share a sense of purpose, and who know how to get stuff done. And so we're excited to pursue new projects and we're constantly in conversation. So to be continued on that front.
Melinda: Yes. So on that front, as we wrap up here, if people want find out more, where can they find you?
Shuja: So you know where you can find me? You can go to Instagram at @snarky_karachite. DM me. Let's talk. Let's chat, and if you want learn more about the work that we've done at Tishna Films, you can go to www.tishnafilms.com. See you there.
Melinda: All right. Thank you so much.
Shuja: Melinda. you're awesome. I think what you're doing is a great work and you are the creative vortex. People should know that.
Melinda: Thank you. Thanks again to Shuja Uddin for our conversation today. You can find out more about him at tishnafilms.com and on Instagram at @snarky_karachite. This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with Production Assistance by Brandon Burke. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Today on the show, Shuja Uddin. One of the most important ideas in creativity studies has to do with drawing new connections between seemingly unrelated things. In so many ways, the creative experience is about melding and blending ideas, themes, stories, and moments of inspiration into an original form. As creatives, we benefit from having an array of cultures and experiences to draw inspiration from.
We benefit from being global citizens, and that's one of the main reasons I'm excited to bring you my conversation with Shuja. Shuja is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and a professor of media studies. He grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, and his work addresses sociopolitical themes both in his home country and more globally.
He's always drawn inspiration from all over the world, including Western pop culture. I started the conversation by asking him what drew him to film in the first place.
Shuja: So I think growing up in Pakistan, I used to watch a lot of Hollywood movies. And I loved Dennis the Menace. I loved Home Alone, I loved Batman.
So there was something that was quite different in the context of Pakistan, where you didn't have this kind of media. People weren't making those kinds of cinema or films. So that was a lot of that contact, you can say, from the Global North in terms of cinema, movies, content, music. And then as a kid, particularly during the 2000s when I was growing up, traveling a lot to England, to the UK, to the US you know, I would come to Houston, I would go to Birmingham, London.
So you'd see a lot of the culture that was there, and I would want to stay there. I always had this reluctance to go back. I was like, no, I want to stay here. I want to go to the comic book store. I want to go to Waterstones. I want go to WHS Smith. I want to go to Barnes and Noble. So I would love going there, reading comic books, reading books. And my mom would do all this shopping and I would just be at the bookstore for hours, yeah, just reading books. And over the years, I would say Japanese anime, and Manga was another source of inspiration. And so later in the 2000s I was way more into that. I was creating, writing manga, drawing manga. I was learning. I wanted to be an artist, like animator and I would sometimes take drawing classes and stuff. So that was a huge inspiration for me.
But I think what ushered this move towards really pursuing it and figuring out what your life's task is, was the death of Michael Jackson. I mean, all throughout my growing up years, Michael Jackson, as we know, was more of a caricature to us, especially in Pakistan. I wasn't exposed to his music to that extent that people in America were, or other countries.
And so when he died, they started playing his Thriller, Billy Jean and all of that kind of music. And I was just so mesmerized by the showmanship and it was very cinematic and movie. So that started, I would say, a conscious decision to pursue creative work. Creativity.
Melinda: Okay. Yeah. That's so interesting because it's like all these Western influences, maybe outside of the culture you grew up in, superheroes, comics, you know, rock stars, and now I know more recently you've also gone back to your culture, and the context you grew up in, in a way, in some of your creative work and looking at pretty serious sociopolitical issues in Pakistan and Karachi. You made a beautiful short film called Article 370 with your collaborator, Ibrahim Baloch, who I've had the pleasure to meet, about a young pregnant woman in the disputed Kashmir region. It's a beautiful film, and I know right now you're working on another script that has to do with water rights and corruption in certain neighborhoods in Karachi. So, how did your experience growing up there shape the kinds of stories you want to tell?
Shuja: Yeah, because you know, I grew up during post 9/11, and so you had a lot of terrorism that was happening. You had the effects of the war in Afghanistan that was happening. Then you had things like political violence, gang violence, corruption, crime, and then you had a lot of love. You had a lot of family, and so you grew up in a space which is almost like a gumbo of a lot of things happening at the same time. You're going to school, but also there's a bomb explosion. So how do you process these two information, but you also gotta get a good grade? So it was definitely like an energy that would come at you at different forms and suck you into it.
And so when I was mentioning earlier about traveling overseas, you wouldn't see that a lot, going to America or the UK. And so you would like to be in that space where this talk of creativity, development, innovation and all of that. So the irony is, because I'm Pakistani, my parents are Pakistani, we will go to these Pakistani spaces in these cities. So I was like, yeah, but I want go where the white people are. I mean, I love it. I enjoy the food and I love the people. It's fun, they're loving, but it's just like, I just don't want to be, as they say now, in an echo chamber. I want to be in a space where there are other ideas and learn and grow.
Melinda: Great. Well, you actually kind of perfectly anticipated my next question: So you traveled to Europe, to the US periodically growing up, but you actually came here to live when you went to Boston to go to grad school at BU [Boston University], and I'm curious how actually moving here and living in a major American city, attending grad school, how that shifted your perspective on creativity?
Shuja: It's changed my life.
Melinda: How so?
Shuja: I mean, so ever since I've came to America, and when I was in Boston, I would just expose myself to different experiences. So I would go to like a Sabbath, I would go to some, you know, Palestinian thing. I would go to like a Soka Gakkai Buddhist temple. And I would go like some salsa dancing, bachata dancing.
So I would learn a lot outside of the class too, including doing standup in Boston, in a South Asian Open mic, I would go there. And so, to me, those kinds of things really changed me because I was just getting exposed to new ideas. I was just soaking it all in, you know, I didn't have a lot of money. I was a student and my parents were paying for a lot of it just to be here. So I knew this was a privilege. And I wanted to utilize this privilege in an effective manner. So I wanted to like really express gratitude because this was a phase of education and apprenticeship, which I was excited to be there for.
Melinda: Well, and it sounds like, as a creative, that's the perfect education. You know, you have the formal education and then you have going out and living life in this place where there's so many opportunities and I think as creatives we do need to seek out those experiences. You know, in creativity studies we talk about divergent or associative thinking, which is making connections between maybe seemingly unrelated things. It's the seed of all creativity. Well, where does that come from? It comes from the inputs that we bring in.
Shuja: Yeah. And in my case, what excites me is this space would mean interesting personal lives mixed with geopolitical stuff. And that's what I loved when I was there. Cuz I could just be, you know, Latin culture to Jewish culture, to Arab culture, to Indian culture. But I can try to find a story within there. Like I love the Chinatown in Boston and I would go there a lot and I wanted to tell a story about this thing that happened in the ‘90s, some sort of massacre happened, and it was about the triads from Hong Kong and this and that. I was like, so cool, this place I'm walking, this happened. I mean, it's a tragedy also, but I want to tell the story. I just wanted to tell this story. And so it was just that excitingness of foreign and local. So that associative thinking, that worked for me, that that's how it works. That makes you unique.
Melinda: Yeah. I love how you said that, you know, in a city like that, you know, with so much going on, there's so many stories. So one story in particular, that I've heard from you, if you're willing to share it with us, while you were at BU, I understand you have a friend, a close friend who's from Singapore. You were just there MC-ing his wedding, and I want hear more about that, but I believe you posed as a Singaporean nationalist at one point? Tell us about this.
Shuja: Oh my God. Oh yeah, so the story is that my Indian friend that I met through salsa dancing, by the way, she had her birthday at her place and she invited everybody there. So I met this guy, Guanhua, he's from Singapore. I was like, oh, nice meeting you. Cool, yeah, cool, alright, take care, Buddy. Took pictures. Gone. The next day, I had some issue with my laptop, so I gave it to the BU IT department, and then all of a sudden I got this message on Facebook and I was like, Buddy, is this your laptop?
And I was like, oh, is this Guanhua? Oh, hey! And that's how we just became, awesome friends. And we started talking about politics and Singaporean politics and we said, you know, we should, and there's this lunch happening for Singaporean students at MIT. I said, you know, we've talked about this political stuff, now what if we just start a political party, troll them, go there and make our own flag, and just midway through the lunch, like come up on stage and I can pose to be a Singaporean because in Singapore they have Chinese, Malay, and Indians, and I could pose to be an Indian.
And I can go on stage and say, we need to go back to what our great leader, Lee Kuan Yew, wanted, to make Singapore Great, to go back to our foundations and the people--‘cause Singaporean people are very apolitical--it's a strict censorship and all that (I just recently visited). So they were like shook. They were like,
Melinda: Who is this guy?
Shuja: What is going on? Are we in a conversion camp? Like what's going on? Like and then, and we were like, we need to go back to our roots. So we did that and we did it one more time at Harvard. And so at Harvard, they had a sex education conversation about sex education in Singapore. So it was at the dorms in Harvard. Everybody was sitting and all Chinese Singaporean, predominantly Chinese Singaporeans. And I was there also.
Melinda: And Shuja.
Shuja: And Shuja. Who is Salim from Yishun, one of the roughest neighborhoods in Singapore. All right. And it was Salim.
Melinda: You had a whole backstory.
Shuja: I had a backstory created just for the thing. And so they kept going like, okay, how did you receive sex education in Singapore? And somebody's like, I went to Catholic school. There was Catholic guilt. Somebody was like this, and you, Salim, what do you think? And I was like, I learned it from the best resource possible, www.pornhub.com. They're like, get this guy outta here.
Melinda: Did they drag you out? Security!
Shuja: Well, I was like, there was tension in the air after that. And then my friend eventually revealed like, he’s not Singaporian. He's my good friend. And, and that beauty of our relationship. He would come to my standup and he went back to Singapore after I graduated. And he told me earlier last year, like, buddy, I'm getting married. I'd like you to be the MC of my wedding.
Melinda: And it all happened. You had a tough time getting to Singapore.
Shuja: That was, that's a whole other story.
Melinda: I'm gonna kind of go off book a little bit here, but I'm just thinking about the very first time we met. Actually, we were sitting in 24 Diner.
Shuja: Yes. Great place.
Melinda: Over in downtown Austin. You were telling me about a particular book that really influenced you. Do you happen to remember what that was?
Shuja: Is it the Dale Carnegie one?
Melinda: Yes.
Shuja: How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Melinda: Yes.
Shuja: Huge book, changed my life.
Melinda: How so?
Shuja: It changed my life in a way where I was as a teenager, very dorky. And not saying that I'm not still dorky or anything like that, but I was very shy.
Melinda: Dorky sexy?
Shuja: Okay, there you go. It's a new thing. Write it down. [laughter] So when I was a teenager, you know, I come from a very STEM heavy society also, and nd STEM heavy school. So to be creative and an artist and a little offbeat was not the sexy thing to do. It was more of a dorky thing to do. And then I wasn't that comfortable talking to people, especially the fairer sex, let's just say that. To then reading that book over one of my trips to England, on the train I would read it, and Dale Carnegie, and I would apply things to it, which were at times very awkward.
Melinda: Like what?
Shuja: Like, like complimenting my mom's friend's food in a way that was like not so genuine, like it looks forced, but over a period of time you learned certain things about that book that opened you up.
Melinda: Like complimenting people, making eye contact.
Shuja: Complimenting people. Eye eye contact was pretty huge because when I was applying for my undergrad in Karachi and we had this neighbor, she worked at a major multinational company. My mom sent me to her just like, “Help him out.” And, I was so nervous around her and she was like, look into my eye. And I was like, okay.
Melinda: The last thing a teenage boy wants to do.
Shuja: So that was one of those things. But when I started doing standup, that changed me a lot, I feel like that brought a new…
Melinda: How so?
Shuja: Because I was now in one room with tons of people, they're all looking at you, and I'm trying to make them laugh.
Melinda: I mean, stand up to me is like the scariest; I perform, I sing, I speak.
Shuja: Yes. You're great, you’re awesome.
Melinda: I do all the things, but standup is the thing I'm most terrified of.
Shuja: And I did it. And the first time I did it, I made people laugh and I was like, okay, so I can be funny. And I showed it to one of my professors who I looked up to, professor John Bernstein, and he's like, “You are funny.”
He was from Denmark. You are funny. I was like, that's it. On track. And so I kept doing it every month and I wasn't funny every month. And I don't know if I'm still funny, but that changed me a lot. And I don't feel that, I mean there is that nervousness, but it, I'm like, let's go and give them a show. That thing changed me. And that is what I take from Michael Jackson.
Melinda: Yeah, I love that because that actually, you know, I've thought a lot about; I was a really shy kid too, and kind of nerdy.
Shuja: Oh really? What?
Melinda: But I really wanted to sing. And I had to overcome my shyness.
Shuja: Yeah.
Melinda: You know, I would literally get up in front of people, my legs would shake, and my face would turn bright red. And yet, I still wanted to do it. And it wasn't like for the fame and glory; it was like there was something just in me.
Shuja: You want to express.
Melinda: You know, and, and it took me years to overcome that, but then so many years down the road, you get better at it. It gets easier, you get more comfortable with it. And not only that, like from a personality perspective, I think I was, you know, definitely inherently more of an introvert. And yet I've done so many extroverted-type things like teaching, performing, getting up in front of people, that I think I've also become more extroverted.
And really what, you know, introversion is about needing time to recharge.
Shuja: Yeah. Space.
Melinda: It's not necessarily being a social butterfly, but something about that comfort. You know, just becoming comfortable in your own skin, in a way.
Shuja: And do you feel over the years you've become more comfortable with your skin?
Melinda: Absolutely. For example, like here we are in a recording studio. When I would make recordings, like I studied classical voice and opera, and, I would listen back to the recording, and it was like, excruciating, because the sound I heard in my head and what I heard on the recording were totally different.
Shuja: Wow.
Shuja: You know, and, but over many, many years, I got used to the sound of my own voice, until they became one and the same.
Shuja: Mm-hmm. Yeah. People have that issue, like they, I mean, I used to have that a little bit, but what you're saying is exactly true, like over a period of time, stop having that difference between what you think you sound like and what it actually sounds like.
Melinda: Exactly.
Shuja: And then you accept it as like, that's how I am. And then you can have fun with it.
Melinda: Exactly. So speaking of fun, maybe this is the leading question, but what's your creative superpower?
Shuja: Creative superpower. Overthinking.
Melinda: Overthinking. [Laughter]
Shuja: That's my creative superpower. Yeah. But something excites me, and I just walk around a lot, super animated.
Melinda: Yeah, so an idea comes in your head or an inspiration and you're just chewing on it.
Shuja: Yeah. And it's, I just lighten up. And I see just, the potential of the story and the exploration of the story is just like, oh my - stop meee!!!
Melinda: Excitement. Yeah, well, I love that, and I've kind of touched on this in a previous session of the show where I really feel that, you know, creativity is connected to our life force energy.
Shuja: Yeah.
Melinda: Right? And so when we get jazzed about something, it lights us up.
Shuja: Exactly. And there's, I don't know if you have time for this, but I wanted to say like there's something which I learned from Robert Greene, which we all know intrinsically, but it's your life's task, knowing what you want to do with your life. And something with, you have all these pressures in life, you are working, you have other professions. As independent filmmakers, as artist creators, we have to do other things to supplement our income. And one thing that I learned is to protect and serve. But I would say protect and preserve your life's task is a huge thing where you're like very, you know, like a baby.
Melinda: You have to guard it.
Shuja: Guard it, because there are so many things that can take your time away from nurturing that part of your life, which is...
Melinda: So many distractions.
Shuja: It's like, oh, I wish I could have done that. Like, that's what I don't want. I regret like I wish, or, oh, look at them, they're doing it. Whatever. Like, no, just go and. That's what I tell my students. Find a way.
Melinda: Yeah. Great. Well, I wanna kind of make sure we touch on, you just started a film production company, Tishna Films, with a couple of collaborators. And I'm curious, where does the name Tishna come from?
Shuja: Tishana comes from, so my maternal grandfather, his name was Tishna Barelvi. Tishna is an Urdu word for wanting more, desiring more, to have a desire that is unsatisfied, to want more. It comes from the word tishnagi. And my grandfather, he was a poet. He was an Urdu poet, and I felt that this word tishna symbolizes both my desire to do more and to preserve and protect that life task.
Melinda: Yes.
Shuja: And to create, and tell stories, but also is a great way to honor my grandfather who was really into philosophy, education, he spoke Russian, a secret communist. He was, a lot of things that were going on in his life that he was a computer, one of the first few people who did work on computers in Pakistan.
Melinda: Yeah.
Shuja: And so he was all about books, reading. He wasn't a like a very career-oriented person. He was much more of a thinker. So I feel like he would've been proud of me to see that I wrote articles, that I studied in America, and like he would be happy to see that these developments happened. He passed away before any of that happened.
He passed away in 2015, but, just to honor that, I feel like it's important. So I started a company called Tishna Films, last year. And we made this documentary for The University of Texas, Austin, and the Texas system of care. It's called The Power of Connection, which is about the youth peer support in Texas, people who support at-risk teens who are suffering mental struggles and help them overcome them because they've been through the similar experience. So now they're on the other side. They're helping them, they're giving them a space to think. And youth peer support is a key thing that has helped a lot of kids.
So there was this one girl in Houston, Texas. Gabby, and she had a great support from a youth peer provider named Arianna. And so we made a five-minute short doc for that. And one of the great things was, the purpose of the documentary was to get the legislators and the powers to be in Texas to provide more funding to these kinds of institutions. Especially in Central Texas, where there's barely any of this kind of support. So I think it's important. And so I had a great time running a production company, to be in a producer role. Being a screenwriter myself to then go into a producer role and learning a lot just by going through it, building my own team. Great people I worked with, Devon Foster, Matt Rifley, Tom Santos, Tori Rice, all of these great filmmakers and artists in Austin that we worked together. We hustled and made it happen. And it was like a small knit team.
Melinda: And so speaking of which, how do you put together a team and foster creative collaboration?
Shuja: Well then you have to have Devon Foster on the team. [Laughter] Devon, if you're hearing this, wherever you are. So you have to have people who you get along with, people who share the sense of creative joy, who share a sense of purpose, and who know how to get stuff done. And so we're excited to pursue new projects and we're constantly in conversation. So to be continued on that front.
Melinda: Yes. So on that front, as we wrap up here, if people want find out more, where can they find you?
Shuja: So you know where you can find me? You can go to Instagram at @snarky_karachite. DM me. Let's talk. Let's chat, and if you want learn more about the work that we've done at Tishna Films, you can go to www.tishnafilms.com. See you there.
Melinda: All right. Thank you so much.
Shuja: Melinda. you're awesome. I think what you're doing is a great work and you are the creative vortex. People should know that.
Melinda: Thank you. Thanks again to Shuja Uddin for our conversation today. You can find out more about him at tishnafilms.com and on Instagram at @snarky_karachite. This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with Production Assistance by Brandon Burke. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
