On being written into existence and the experience so far.

Meet Shyaire Ganglani. As in, go out of your way to meet Shyaire Ganglani because your life will be better for knowing this warm,, wickedly-funny and whip smart woman.
Shyaire (Shy) has a way with words across many different formats. She is a stand-up comic and comedy producer, delivering belly-aching, thought-provoking laughs to local and global audiences. She’s also a spoken word poet, whose tutelage has inspired a number of amateur poets to take the stage as part of Brown Women Poetry, and whose raw, heartbreaking, verbal rhythm lends a voice to advocacy via Poets for Palestine. Shy is also a podcast host and in-demand podcast guest. Her day job is Associate Creative Director, and her self-assigned KPI is to consistently challenge the status quo at big-big name, deeply-deeply entrenched advertising agencies.
Read on to share in Shy’s experiences with getting out and growing up, fitting in, owning her story and workshopping punchlines with her parents as a form of healing.
Of Indian Sindhi origin, Shy was born in Singapore and grew up in Dubai. Her name means poetry and her twin brother’s name, Shyair, means poet; hence her stand up comedy bit about him writing her into existence. This is one of many examples of Shy’s quick wit that gives shape to her experiences and makes them relatable.
Shy’s move to Melbourne was dubbed a ‘quarter life crisis’ by friends and family, as she was ‘an unmarried Indian girl in her 20s who had never even attended university abroad’. Perhaps it was an existential manoeuvre but as it turns out, it was also entirely necessary. You see, the goal was autonomy and empowerment; untangling the ‘huge and wonderful parts about being loved by a brown family’ from ‘the many challenges, suffocating bits and the infantilisation that goes on.’
For Shy, the seesaw of emotions and expectations from these experiences materialised as humour and poetry. With the dichotomy of her upbringing versus her experiences in a new country not understood, or sometimes downright mocked by friends in conversation (references to ‘tiny violins for the privileged girl whose family did everything for her’), poetry offered an outlet where nobody could tell her she ‘sounded ridiculous’ because ‘everyone just stayed silent and snapped.’ Likewise, the brown woman tendency to use humour to conceal feelings and deflect, meant comedy became another form of catharsis.
In relentlessly pursuing both forms of expression, Shy has created opportunities where she is being ‘paid to journal but make it funny or make it poignant.’ Whether reflecting on her recent experiences, or in her lifetime, doing so with a work lens has afforded her the ability to get to know herself through trying to sell herself to the public. Essentially, doing the work is her work.
As brown women we know all too well the work is part and parcel of our being because ‘for so many complex reasons, whether it’s gender, race, age group, relations to parents, or all of those things, we are told to shut down our trauma and just move on because it does not benefit or profit society or those around us to focus on our trauma.’ Cue generational cycles of harm and ongoing pain, both emotional and physical.
As Shy sees it, our trauma is actually ‘a superpower’ and ‘currency gold’ that she is trading in and teaching other women how to trade too, ‘because everyone’s got a story that relates to yours.’
Knowing hard conversations with brown families normally requires a serious amount of therapy and healing, her stand up sparks necessary but uncomfortable conversations; ‘after two or three times of sending jokes or workshopping pieces with them on the phone, my parents will hear me and seek to understand why I’m so hurt by my upbringing. So whilst they’re not going to go see a therapist with me, I have been able to unravel a lot of topical conversations with them through humour, which has been incredible.’
In fact, the dialogue Shy’s comedy has created with her family extends as far as workshopping comedy sets with her mum on topics that she wouldn’t otherwise have the gumption to raise. For instance, her Brown Woman Comedy set about dating women contained a double punch line courtesy of her mum.
Her siblings have gone the extra mile and attended Shy’s stand up shows in Dubai, listening to her ‘shit all over the family.’ While there was plenty of laughter, there were also questions of why their family’s dirty laundry was being aired, to which Shy’s prompt response was ‘even the dirty laundry is worth selling’.
Returning to poetry, her first love, Shy facilitated the Brown Women Poetry workshops, which led to a Brown Women Poetry showcase. Her guidance around vulnerability with power, going inwards and finding a small spark to tell individual stories, paved the way for an incredibly healing experience for performers and the audience alike, all within what felt like a blink of an eye. This is a true testament to her grasp of language and her power with words; the ability to draw out what is unsaid in others, who are ready to find or reclaim their voice through verse.
Her own experiences with poetry in all its forms; spoken word, slam, freestyle, is deeply respectful of its roots, especially slam poetry which was born out of black oppression. On oppression, Shy’s is an important voice in poetry circles, advocating for those whose voices have been silenced and stifled and strained. Her impact is evidenced by the number of people she has bumped into at Melbourne’s Protests for Palestine who have said they were compelled to attend after hearing her deeply visceral and impactful Scroll, Scroll poem.
‘As a human race, we keep saying we’re going to do better and then we keep letting huge atrocities slide; whether it’s Palestine or Congo or Sudan. Growing up in the Middle East, I saw how many people in my own city stood back and let a humanitarian catastrophe unfold in Syria and I think too many of us go about our days, live our lives, and we don’t consider what is going on in the world around us because we think it doesn’t affect us and we don’t want it to affect us, but it does affect us. We cannot end up being the people who say as long as it’s not happening in my backyard.
Conflict and displacement has happened in all of our lifetimes. Directly or indirectly, it’s happened to us, our families, our ancestors. To pretend like it hasn’t is silly, it’s disempowering, and it’s a missed opportunity to work for the better future we keep saying we want.’
Yet, Shy remains a great believer in the power and influence of people and community. Whilst she acknowledges that community is vital to survival; ‘if you don’t have community you are isolating yourself from a part of your identity that you won’t know you miss until you wake up one day and realise that there’s a gaping hole inside you.’ She also knows the suffocation of cultural communities with its fair share of toxic traits; ‘When I moved here, I never wanted to hear another Sindhi person talk again. I was so disempowered by my own community. I felt so judged and misheard and misunderstood.’
This prompted a journey to reconcile cultural and traditional baggage to reestablish her identity within brown communities, “decolonise” her life, and safeguard herself from rebuilding an identity without a foundation. Shy is able to move through this process thanks in large to her most unmovable and unshakable value: kindness. Kindness that extends both to herself and others.
‘Coming from a culture that is super focused on success and wealth, when you ask people what they want to achieve before they die you’ll often hear, I want to die famous, I want to die rich, I want to die loved, I want to die successful. Personally, I want to die kind, as in I would like to be known for my kindness. Not like a martyr, but in a way that people know that I was genuinely trying to show up for them because I had so much love in my heart for them. Whether that’s community, whether that’s people, whether that’s a cause that I’m showing up for. I always want to show up kind and with empathy.’
As someone who knows this incredible human very well, I can attest to Shy’s kindness that is in constant practice.
Thank you Shy for not just your kindness but for doing the work to find your voice and for being unapologetically vocal for what you believe in. Your thoughtfulness paired with your intelligence allows you to speak with a power that urges others to listen and act.

Follow Shy’s adventures and achievements on:
Instagram: @shyreesays
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shyaire
Website: www.shyaireganglani.com