FREEWHEELING with Freedom Tree
Shaili Chopra
SheThePeople TV and Gytree
A freewheeling interview with Shaili Chopra. A lady with five careers, three in journalism, two as an entrepreneur as she moves into new spaces. We sit down and she she shares her work ethos and welcomes us into her creative home.
@shailichopra
July 2025
Freedom with abandon
WIt is 3.00 am in the morning on an army base in Gwalior. A round of explosive sound goes off. Two little girls, six and ten are startled and jump out of their beds. They see thrity five people outside the gates. A string of ‘ladi patakas’ [firecrackers] have been lit. “It’s Diwali season, we’re not partying, we’re not playing cards! Why is this camp so boring?’ say the vistors.
Shaili the ten year old, hiding behind the curtains, remembers her parents opening the door, pretty much in their night suits. Everybody just came in and their mother threw on a fancier dressing gown and got on to drubbing up egg bhurji and chow. “My dad opened the bar at four in the morning, and suddenly there was a party that was emerging into the dawn. As a 10 year old, I was just amazed that this is a thing that can happen! Even though we were very free spirited at home, you know, a 3 a.m. party has its own shock value, and it stays with you for life.”
“So I think for me growing up in that military space was something that had a sheer sense of freedom and abandonment. There is this randomness of freedom within a framework, which was just safety. These things were so organic and fluid, and they had a fabric of fun.”
Change is the constant
W“I think my journey starts from my childhood where I was very used to constant change. As an armed forces child it meant that every year we would change a city, change a school, change friends.”
“Sometimes I think the word change is considered negative. For me, it was an opportunity to adapt to new opportunities, adopting to new relationships and cultures, and meeting new people. That's why, I finally took to a career in journalism, when India's broadcast channels were opening up.”
“For me, it was very clear that this deserves my attention. And then move to what else excites me, because I don't see each step of my life as just one thing I want to do.”
No space for womens’ conversations
W “I always say that we're created equal and then we are shown the path of inequality. I was raised in a very free spirited household where two young daughters were told they could reach for the skies. And then you land up in a real world and you realize that, your skies have a very complex path and you have to have lots of power, energy, money to climb the same stairs that anyone else can climb without them.”
“I used to ask myself that, what is this space around us? And to me, that space was always more friendly to men. When I say friendly, I mean there's something called par for the course or normal. Our normal is where men get the bigger chunk of opportunity, power, also voice.”
“As a person who had spent 15 years on Indian television, I could see it. I could notice the number of CEOs who are men versus women; and the women who were CEOs, how much they got to speak versus how the rest. So essentially, for me, it was very cathartic to say we need to create a space where women find their own voice and voice their own selves. And that was why SheThePeople was born.”
A revolution in motion for the woman. Everyday.
WSheThePeople needed to move from being a momentary revolution linked to a larger historic event to becoming something that was constantly in motion for the everyday woman. Shaili still feels, “at least in the world of media, globally, and when SheThePeople, was born, the idea of women talking about women was considered a fight, a battle, a feminist piece of activism.”
“All of which I embrace. You know, I have nothing against that, but I feel I want to take that spirit and put it against this notion that you can be quiet and revolutionary. You can speak up, you can wear pink lipstick and red clothes and black shoes, and short clothes and sarees and still be that woman who wants to claim that space.
”That's why SheThePeople was established to become an everyday woman's space of her own. "The idea of feminism is not definitional, which is how we all see it. “I think the idea of what feminism is, how we embrace it in everyday lives. Can I go and drink coffee and sit with my legs up on a lovely sofa today? I think that's an act of feminism. If somebody stops you, that's an interference with choice.”
The Sisterhood Economy
W“I'm constantly trying to find how women in different economic strata are still at such a base level of finding their opportunity or doing what they want, despite all the education and opportunity they may have.”
“An example, I still talk about and have documented it in my book: A woman in South Bombay who's been sent to London by a really wealthy family to study in the best university in London. When she comes back, she is told, ‘you have to get married’. The girl resists, saying she really wants to work while she studies. She is told to start a soaps, chocolate, or boutique businesses, but in their families, girls don't run the ship. Sadly, this is not an uncommon story in women I talk to today.”
“There is a pattern. Many very wealthy households are not creating enough opportunity for their daughters to take on the real business of the house. Kudos to those who are managing to do that, but there is a fundamental problem in the belief that you don't think your daughter could run the empire. Problematic.”
W“At the same time, you'll find, the desire to work at another level. When I was living in Bombay, my own Didi [house-help] was pregnant at the same time as me. I was panicked because I was like, ‘oh, my God - well, it's lovely to have partner in pregnancy - but how is my baby going to be looked after?’ I'm sure she had the same thoughts regards her work.”
“This woman had the economic smarts! She had planned that after three months of the baby's birth, I'm going to find a nanny so I can be the nanny to your child. And I didn't think of that at all. The fact that she thought that for her, this entire economic opportunity that she was engaged in so important for her, as was this for my work.”
“So I think, you know, there are so many things about the idea of sisterhood. It's such a powerful term, but it’s simply this: that we make space for the other person when they need it. And by that I don't mean, space for just health. I mean when space for ideas, space for retort, rebuke, to agree and disagree, and also space for just their own ways of doing things.”
Being Loud. Being Clear.
“I've been accused of being a feminist. I like to be loud and clear. Think about all the criticism that we've heard growing up. Be soft spoken, very coy. I'm calling a criticism, what they consider qualities. And I was very amused because my father would always say, ‘Shaily, you're so loud’. I said, ‘I'm not just loud. I hope you notice I am clear.’”
“For me, it was very central to my personality that if I need to find myself a role on television in a male dominated space. Where people see you as a pretty face and think, ‘you don't know your stock markets and you don't know your business and you don't know your numbers’ - what is the way to make sure that you're heard?”
“You just be loud. I mean if nobody's going to hear you in a room in their cacophony, the only way to break it is to be loud. I'm not person who buys into the idea that, sometimes very soft spoken people can also get their point. Works for others. Great. Just doesn't work for me.”
“The other reason why I'm so loud and clear is because the narrative has changed for women’s issues. People say ‘Oh, in the last five years, there's so much that has happened for women.’ So we always are constantly seeing too much, too little, too much, too little, as if, women are a part of an algebric formula, X and Y, and one goes here and the equation gets balanced.”
We understand only the Devi or the Devil.
“The power of the Shakti, the Devi, the multitude of things that a woman in various forms does, often goes un-recognized by the woman herself. And I think that is really what part of my anger is linked to. As we try to build at SheThePeople, we aim to get more women to recognize that they are the doers, they need to celebrate themselves.”
“Women need to claim that space rather than constantly see their success vis-a-vis, a highly male dominated society and world. Patriarchy has been so deep-rooted in women that they themselves are finding it difficult to get out of it.”
“I think we only understand the Devi or the devil and we're willing to respect both. The devil is basically somebody who is not going to listen to you. The Devi is somebody you want to worship because you want something from her.”
Part two here :
We continue our chat with Shaili Chopra, where she talks of work, home life and Freedom Tree as a force of ‘creative destruction’, like the Big Bang theory.
