Shahana Dattagupta

In 2010 I co-founded Flying Chickadee to connect people who thrive in the cultural interstices through their stories, creative and social/entrepreneurial endeavors.

At Flying Chickadee we catalyze and share transcultural stories and creative endeavors of courage, creativity and change, in hopes of shaping an integrated, harmonious, equitable world.

We leverage self-publishing channels, print-on-demand and social media (and our own superpower storytelling skills!) to bring works of transcultural creatives to market. We publish a periodic zine titled "Courageous Creativity" to connect people "like you and me" with their stories of courage, creativity and change (see more below). And we coach Creativity Workshops for those geared up to invent just about anything.

Courageous Creativity, published through Flying Chickadee, is a periodic zine that presents stories of courage and creativity sourced from people like you and me, living, working, being courageously creative and changing themselves and others in our community. Our writers come from diverse backgrounds and all walks of life - they are small business owners, state employees, corporate CEOs, non-profit founders and volunteers, professionals, scientists, sociologists, artists, activists, mothers and fathers, and friends.

Courageous Creativity is a community and a tribe, and has a growing following in North America, parts of Europe, and India.

At thirty, Shahana found the little girl she once was - brimming with love, creativity and a desire to touch the world in meaningful and purposeful ways - nearly obliterated. Suddenly, she was a performer, achiever, professional, wife, emigrated Indian-American, corporate employee, home-owner, and other such good-good things that earned her checked boxes and plaques and approving nods. Before she knew it, she was co-dependent in a violent marriage, the scars on her soul far deeper than those on her body, unable to love anymore, but mostly hating only herself. Later that year, she walked towards the terrifying flame of light that beckoned to her, leaving behind the house of cards she had so carefully fabricated. In Thrive! Falling in Love with Life, Shahana tells you what happened in the seven years thereafter, and all the amazing insights that came to light. She shares how she nearly died from the suffering that followed, but how one day, a miraculous vision compelled her to choose life. She describes how she found her center of gravity, her Higher Power; how becoming conscious to the present completely transformed her past and future; how compassion opened the doors to authentic power; how she recognized her choice in everything that had happened and everything yet to be; and how her separate physical existence dissolved to connect her with everything and everybody around. And she reveals how, through all these insights, she unlocked the mysterious powers of her creativity: the ability to create her own life at every turn!

Thrive! is about all these things, yet most of all, it is about love: that pure, essential, divine, generative life-force. Shahana shares how her commitment to unconditional love opened her to love for the divine, for other beings, for all human creative potential, for life itself. Today she works as a design strategist, storyteller, performing artist, community advocate and creativity coach, but this time around she knows that all she really does, is love. Because she loves, she creates, and because she creates, she acts as a catalyst in the lives of others.

Ten avatars of woman are explored through the telling of little incidents and big turning points in the lives of female protagonists: a little child amidst parental dissonance, a girl at puberty becoming vulnerable to predators, a cynical teenager struggling with her national identity, a young graduate student returning to travel in her native land, an arrange-married wife striving for independence after emigrating, a single woman seeing the reflection of herself in a white man, a first-time mother struggling with motherhood away from home, a divorced woman reinventing herself in foreign land, an early-forties woman embracing the truth of her sexuality, and a woman in her twilight years reflecting back. This collection of stories weaves together intimate cross-cultural experiences, with variegated vignettes unique to the Indian- American expatriate experience in contemporary times, yet reveals the universal essence of being female.

The Creativity Workshops I coach are based on the premise that each of us has limitless potential to be creative, often hidden as a light within, waiting to be sparked. As Michelangelo said, the sculptor's job is to chip away the excess stone so that the sculpture already existing within the rock can be revealed. You are that sculpture, and you are also the sculptor! By accessing love as the sculpting force, creativity can be expressed through the combination of one's personal story, unique purpose, innate gifts, and learned skills.

Participants are encouraged to use our workshops as an incubation space to invent something - an enterprise, a work of art, a new way of doing something (anything!), and ultimately, themselves. So, they are required to choose a real creative project, which becomes the "construction site" or "playground" for a connection with and re-creation of themselves, and for practicing the approaches and principles being explored. Although creative writing is used as a primary medium of expression, there are many other techniques and mediums at play. The collective creative energy of the group has a profound impact on the participants and their projects, and final outcomes are also showcased to an invited audience.

After 5 years of contributing as a storyteller, performer and mentor, I was honored, humbled and thrilled to further shape this important movement as 2011 Director of Yoni-ki-Baat, Seattle.

Yoni Ki Baat (inspired by Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues) is a growing collection of authentic, bold, vivid, tender, powerful and poignant stories told by South Asian women. Seattle's Yoni Ki Baat has taken a creative life of its own in a unique space of sharing and community through sourcing and presenting true stories from local South Asian women. Each year our narratives shed light on the special challenges and opportunities experienced in the South Asian socio-cultural context, whether in native lands or in adopted homelands. Acknowledging female sexuality as an essential aspect of identity, experience and expression, this transformative space encourages South Asian women to express their challenges, hopes, dreams, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and aspirations for change on behalf of their bodies.

Yoni Ki Baat 2011 was presented at AAINA (March 25, 26, 27), an annual South Asian women's performance festival by Tasveer, with sponsorship from the Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas and Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM).

My visual art consists of either abstract expressions of my spiritual journey, or commentaries on the social, political, cultural conditions and womanhood in my native India, or the transcultural experiences of being an Indian-American. Bold colors and vigorous moves best represent my spirit and energy, and I resonate with Van Gogh's statement that "A work of art is never complete, only abandoned."

The joy and satisfaction of designing this retirement home for my parents back in India in a semi-rural site beat anything I accomplished in eight years of design strategy work for large and amazing clients (Boeing, Microsoft, SeaTac airport, Office Depot ...) in a global design firm! This home is situated in serene Shantiniketan, Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore's dream global university, and has now turned into a community asset, with many families of relatives and friends visiting it for weekend getaways from the intensity of the city of Kolkata.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for me, words can also paint vivid pictures! Reflections and Revelations is a weblog about little and big experiences and their associated insights, which I hope will have resonance for many. I connect the dots between the experiences in my various facets to extract insight and meaning. And as I flit and I flutter through the journey that is life, this little spot gives me a venue to share the meaning I stumble upon every so often.

This essay, written back in 2004, won the international (Archvoices) award and was subsequently published in the Almanac of Architecture and Design in 2005. In it were the beginnings of my questioning how doing large commercial projects was changing individual lives and making social change. Not that they cannot or don't, but it was important to me to find meaning and relevance at every step and every turn.