Episode Transcript
Hello, my name is Aziz and I'm the son of a divorced mother.
She is really my superhero.
That's why it's important for me to support women to share their uniqueness, their personalities,
perspectives, and emotions about life.
Too many women in this world feel alone.
They worry about the judgment of others and they struggle with their mental health.
But when they listen to the Rare Girls podcast where empowered women share their voices
and tell their stories, many women will feel inspired to live a life of freedom and
overcome all insecurities they will feel.
It is a safe space to find their confidence, to remember their unique beauty and to feel their self-worth.
And they will connect with the sisterhood of rare girls who encourage their success and support their dreams.
That's what this podcast is all about.
My guest today is Syeda Suraiya Fatima.
Suraya is a Pakistani young poetess and has an immense passion for English literature,
which is her major in university too.
She creatively expresses strong and intense human emotions in her poems, which leaves
her readers in a state of amazement.
Her published work has been featured in Euphoria, an anthology by TWS Publications.
She makes time for cooking, reading, and music in her daily life.
Moreover, in her university she is involved in dramatics and debates and her drama which
she had directed won the competition.
Soraya dreams of becoming a successful writer one day.
Soraya, how are you today?
I'm fine and very happy. How are you Aziz?
I feel blessed, very, very positive and looking forward to know much, much more about you.
So I'll begin with this nice first question, which is,
Soraya, if your friends and the people who know you best could describe your personality,
What would they say about you?
Well, they like to describe me as a person who is very cool and calm,
has a dry sense of humor, and who cooks good food.
Tell me a bit more. Why do you love cooking?
Is it because you love sharing with your family that experience?
And how does cooking relate to poetry?
Is it that you're cooking words when you're writing?
Tell me more.
No, no, no. It's not like that. I love cooking because I love food and I believe that Pakistani
cuisine is awesome. So I love to learn it and spend my time in cooking as a hobby.
It is a very good time pass, I believe. And when I made dishes, they found my dishes very
delicious. So it motivated me to cook more. Thank you. That's really, really interesting.
And I want to know a bit more about poetry because it's sharing your raw emotions.
It's something very personal.
So often there are many women who are afraid of criticism.
How do you deal with the possibility that you sharing your truth or poetry could have some critics criticize
which to some people can stop them from sharing their truth with the world
because they worry they will get hurt in the process?
Well, I think I got lucky that I have no critics. Whoever has read my poem, they find it very
interesting and they appreciate me very much. And they're literally in shock, like,
how do you write that? And they ask me, like, what's the process? And I just say that, like,
it's an inspiration that comes in random times. And I just write it.
Thank you. And are there some emotions that seem to be a trend or a theme that you return
to often? What do you tend to express? Is it more of the broken hearted situation? Some
people say that art is always caused by tragedy or are they positive emotions? What
about those human emotions, the ones that you tend to return to and write about more
often?
Well, I agree with those people who say that art is caused by tragedy. It is very
true. And also, it is also caused when you are having some like euphoric feelings. So
I have basically two themes going on in my poetry. It is rather like, I'm feeling too
much happy and feeling like too much romantic. So I want to literally romanticize everything
around me. I want to exaggerate small things and like portray them as big players
of life. On the other hand, there's another theme that is going on and it is very dark.
And it tells about the unfairness and injustice of society and feelings of betrayal and things
like that, which I really want to write it. One major goal which I want to express in
poetry is that a feeling of not being understood. So my poetry is also about that. And it also comes
under the theme of darkness. Thank you. And tell me about romanticizing everything. Is it because
you seek big emotions, extreme emotions, more emotions, or is it because you think that life
will be too bland without romanticizing it, that nothing in this world is really a big
pleasure unless you add the psychological romanticism to it or why is it necessary to romanticize
things that are happening around you?
Very good questions. So I believe it's very necessary to romanticize the world around
you because it gives you happiness and I think it also shows your gratitude towards
nature and your existence on this earth. So when I get really happy or just simply happy,
I feel really like strong emotions as I said in my introduction, as I wrote in my introduction,
that I feel very strong and immense intense emotions due to which this romanticism happens.
So, I want to tell the world that I'm feeling happy, but in a very appreciative way.
Like when I'm happy, I want to appreciate everything around myself, little things like
when I portray like a male figure in my poem, so I made him like his son, like look, look
at him.
He is literally son.
He is giving you all the light.
So that's why I find romanticism very necessary, because it makes you happy, it gives you pleasure, and it makes you grateful.
I like that. And you spoke about the darkness. Are you someone, a woman who believes that all emotions in life are very necessary and important?
that you crave both the happiness and the heartbreak,
the anger and the smiles,
the stress and fear as well as the euphoria
or how does it work for you?
Do you prefer only the positive emotions
or you crave all of them?
Personally, I would like to crave
only the positive emotions,
but in human nature,
they say that human is a sorrow lover.
So, yeah, as a human, we feel both types of emotions, and we are also put in such circumstances
where sometimes we are sad and sometimes we are happy.
So what my idea is that make use of those emotions, like if you are feeling negative
emotions, don't find something positive out of them, like learn something from them
on those negative emotions. First of all, tell yourself that calm down. It's all right to cry,
it's all right to feel in that way. But after that, think, think like what this situation
is teaching you, like what this situation tells you, there must be some lesson in it.
So when you will find it, it will provide you benefits. So I think emotions are important,
But they are important to learn lessons, not to, like, give you mental stress.
I agree 100%.
And about the English language and your appreciation for it, and even your education within English
literature, what made you fall in love with the English language?
If it's something like Harry Potter or Shakespeare or TV series like Friends, or how did you
come to this appreciation and enjoyment and adoration of the English language compared
to any other language you could have written poetry in?
My mother is actually a main English, so she grew up reading English books and also
my whole maternal side. So she always make us to read English books too and encourages
us to like why don't you speak English like it's a beautiful language and it's also necessary since
it's also an international language so one thing was that so I just picked this language out of
nowhere I didn't put much thought in it and I started writing one thing that I find I found
important in my ninth grade was that I want to communicate with the world I want to communicate
with different people of different culture.
So I thought that English learning,
English language is very like necessary.
So that's how I started practicing it.
And since I was very artistic
and have like very strong emotion,
so I started writing in it too.
So I, it's a random process.
And choosing English literature
as my major was also a random process,
I wanted to opt for international relations,
but my father wanted me to go in that certain university
and that university didn't offer international relations.
So English was only choice left for me.
Also, I was always the best in English at my school.
So I thought, okay, I will go there.
But soon as I like, soon I started my first semester, I was in love with this like subject.
It just, it gave me a new love for words.
I like, I'm one reason for me to write poetry and write anything is my love for words.
Like I, I find it as a art, I want to, I'm always on a hunt of very like fancy
pretty word and I want to write it in a paragraph that is like in a flabby language. So that's how
literature become very important to me. Also it's very philosophical so which I always like. That's
it. Thank you. I like that answer and it makes me also wonder you said that you discovered your
desire and interest in communicating with people from all cultures, from all over the world.
What does communication mean for you and how, like, what do you enjoy about it?
How do you enjoy communicating?
Because I believe that's the basis of everything you do.
So tell me more about communication, its importance and the results and emotions it gives you.
Well, since I was younger, like age of 13, I was into all the, like, hot topics of the world.
I want I made very like strong opinions of like women rights and other subjects that are always very trendy on the news and everywhere.
So I at that time I realized like if I want to get my like opinion across.
So I must know the English language because I just don't want to tell my opinion to my own people who speak Urdu.
I want to tell my opinion to everyone in the world so English language is necessary for me to learn
and that's it. Thank you and I want to speak about drama and your ability to direct
your drama which won the competition. Can you tell me how was that experience similar to
you writing poetry? How different is it and what drew you to it? It was very different
but was very exciting as well.
And it was also very tiring.
In second semester, we learned about drama
and I sort of liked the drama.
I wanted to like direct it.
I wanted to write a script, all those things.
And then there was a competition
by performing art society in our university.
It had a drama competition as well,
along with singing and painting competitions.
So my ma'am just ordered me,
she just ordered me that I have to direct a certain drama.
And I was like, okay, because she was my ma'am
and I respect her so much.
I don't want to say no to her.
And I thought that if she had ordered me this drama,
so she must think of me as capable of it.
So I gathered around,
I went in search for the students
and I found them very quickly.
But it took two months for me to practice and create.
First of all, I have to find the script too.
And the script was Damon and Pythias by Frank Gasser.
I did not wrote the script myself.
Let recently, I also directed another drama
on which the script I wrote myself.
So it was my first experience.
We practiced a lot, I directed all the scenes, I like made them learn their dialogues because
it was in English language and they were finding it difficult to learn but ma'am said
that since we are English students so our drama would be in English too.
And eventually when the day happened and when they announced the results, I was,
I literally jumped off my seat and shouted because I put a lot of effort in it.
I have to stay late in the university for the drama and all that sort of thing, but
I enjoyed it.
I loved it and I thought like it gave me a love for theater and I thought in future
I will like associate myself with some kind of theater.
That's great.
And to know even more something related to your growth and confidence there are many women
especially teenage girls who are growing in a time where they don't feel their confidence they
don't trust in themselves maybe they compare themselves to other people who are more successful
or photoshopped women on instagram did you struggle at some point with your confidence
what was your journey of finding it and what's your advice to other women
So first of all, Aziz, I believe that confidence
is that ability which allows you to deserve everything
that you wanted to achieve.
So I believe confidence is very important and very necessary.
And to build it, you do need some external forces.
Like in my case, my father created confidence in me,
like produced confidence in me.
he used to take me out and give me like,
go and talk to like random shopkeeper
and buy things, et cetera.
So that I will be confident to talk to people.
I will not have like social anxiety.
And at school, I did myself, I did something myself
to like build my confidence in that
is to never saying no to any opportunity
for going onto the stage.
So so that's how I this is my like journey of confidence and finding it and about women
Yeah, women like every human have a lot of insecurities. So those insecurities sometime like
Prevents you from having confidence
So and I also don't know what their situation and situations are and why they have so so much low self-esteem
I just want to give them advice that
It's a necessary thing, ladies, like confidence is a necessary thing, and do it slowly, but
try to build it in you, because you deserve all the things you wished for.
That's my answer.
Thank you, Soraya.
And to finish this, what is the typical day and a life of a girl from Pakistan who
studies literature?
How do you spend, let's say, usually your study day and how do you balance your mental health and fun and cooking and also the weekend?
It's like you have to plan it and you have to like keep two things in mind that you have to study but as well as you have to like enjoy.
I say to my class fellows and once I gave a speech in my university, a welcome speech
for juniors and there I like said that study should be your like first priority and mischief
should be your second in the university life.
So that's how I enjoy the both of the I enjoy both like words.
So I will just go to university every day, there I study.
I listen to all my lectures very carefully.
I am like, I'm the topper of my class actually.
So that's why it's very necessary for me to listen.
Thank you so much Soraya.
It was my privilege and my honor to have you here
in this podcast to share your voice,
your perspective and a slice of your life.
I wish you all the success,
all the communication and all the growth in the world. Thank you so much. And thank you so much
Aziz for having me. It's such an honor and I really appreciate you for whatever you want to
do in the future and the things you are doing right now. They are really great. Thank you
for them. You are welcome. Thank you so much.
