Gulshan’s Story: The Woman Who Danced, Fought, And Proved Them Wrong

Hi Subscriber First Name

I wrote about my strong female ancestors in a pitch to the UN last week. It helped me join the dots between the work I do today for mums and the fight my ancestors started in the name of equality.

I am the great-granddaughter of a woman betrothed before she was born.

A woman who never had a breath’s worth of freedom, yet still fought. She pushed back and ensured her own daughter would not be forced into an arranged marriage.

I am the granddaughter of Gulshan – a girl who remained livid until her dying day that her brothers were allowed to finish school when she wasn’t. A girl who ran away every day until her father relented and let her accompany him to his soap factory while her brothers were at school. A girl who quickly mastered entrepreneurship and, before long, set up her first business – a shop selling imported children’s clothes in East Africa.

This was a time when women couldn’t even have bank accounts. You can only imagine the fire she had to fight with to get it off the ground.

She nailed her marketing. Her fashion shows were packed. The new season’s collection was displayed behind a red velvet rope for VIPs only. To say she was a pioneer is an understatement. She single-handedly shattered expectations of what was possible for an unmarried woman in her early twenties, in a Muslim community, in East Africa. And she lived fiercely – she drank, she smoked, and she danced everyone under the table. God I loved her.

She made her own choice when it came to marriage. She shrugged off well-pressed middle-class suitors with their oiled moustaches and instead opted for a penniless but impossibly debonair musician who could cha-cha like no other.

Sadly, it didn’t work out. When she returned to her family asking for a divorce, her father looked her in the eye and said, "You want a divorce? Go jump into the sea." The only way out of marriage for a woman was suicide.

You don’t get from that—to me, a Top 100 Female Entrepreneur with an Oxford degree without an awful lot of fight. And that comes at a personal cost.

Gulshan was ostracised. Her community disowned her. They wanted to keep their daughters away from her in case she gave them “funny ideas.” She rocked the boat, and that terrified them. They saw the way she danced and drank at parties as shameful. They sat back, waiting for her downfall so they could say, "I told you so." The gossip was rife.

She lost friends. But she kept going because she refused to be suffocated by the role she was expected to play. She wanted to learn. She wanted to earn. She wanted to prove them all wrong.

And she did. She died before my triplets were born – a very wealthy woman with an international property portfolio. In fact, I just got a rebate from HMRC because we overpaid her taxes.

Each generation of my female ancestors has fought. They’ve done their bit for the next generation. And my mission with our F*** Mum Guilt movement is a continuation of their work. It’s their fire that I’m keeping burning.

Yes, I have so much more freedom and choice than they did, but I’m not happy to accept society’s expectations of women or mothers.

I'll be sharing a post and inviting you all to celebrate your female ancestors this International Women’s Day. I'll be posting on LinkedIn and Instagram—I’d love for you to join in!

Much love 🙏🏽

Leila (and the still-ill-triplets) xxx

The photo is of my grandfather, husband, me and Gulshan