Mission Dreams 2021 pageantry is inclusive of all and we want every Indian woman to feel she is part of this pageant – for her beauty, brains and commitment. Mission Dreams not only considers a contestant’s beauty and brains but also their social advocacies, their role in empowering women, and bringing a change in society by voicing their opinion against social atrocities and encouraging and influencing the youth of our country for a brighter and better tomorrow.
Dr Shivani Chowdhury is a PhD Professor, Researcher cum Principal of a college of Physiotherapy by profession. She adorns many other hats today! She is an Entrepreneur with a mission to empower the youth and women with a healthy life of significance. She has recently forayed into the fashion industry and has won the title of Ms Queen India 2021 1st Runner up at the Colorpositive Fashion Pageant. Today she is a part of this Organisation as an ally supporting the LGBTQ+ community.
She describes herself to be ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidociuos’, basically a strong willed, optimistic, mind-driven person who takes pleasure in facing newer challenges in life!
She is a person who looks at a glass half full rather than half empty and even though sometimes it gets difficult to look at life this way, she always tries to maintain a positive outlook on life.
Her journey has been that of a student who has dedicated her life to medical and health sciences with research to help people cure their pain as a successful Physiotherapist and then catering to the academic section where she trains students to be productive and better individuals.
She comes from a conservative Hindu Family who believes that it’s abnormal to DREAM beyond ones so called capacity. She was always taught to study… get great grades…. whereby you would get a great paying job. For a woman settling would further mean, getting married and have children and have a balanced life with no goals or aspirations. However, Shivani fought all that and broke the prototype of just being a woman in the family. She has been a role model to her younger two sisters who are doing great and are successful individuals in themselves.
She has been a revolutionary in her own way. She loves the statement quoted by Steve Jobs, that is “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked to myself: If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And when the answer has been “NO” for too many days in a row, than I know I need to change something” and that’s where she took a strong and a bold decision to snap out of just being working in someone else’s network actively and started her own Business and came out of the Box itself to do all that she wanted to as a youngster… be freespirited and fly!!!!!!!
Nevertheless, Shivani is also a family person who lives in Mumbai with her Partner and is a mommy to a terrific 11 year old Boy! With her entry in the fashion world, she aims at inspiring many women to have a right to choose what they want to do with their lives (like her) where they will be individuals and not just a mother, daughter, wife, but as “thinking individuals”. She is thankful to many such platforms like Mission India 2021 to provide such great opportunities to Women of all walks. She believes that Beauty and Fashion Pageants are relevant as long as there are contestants and the fact that she is participating with Mission India proves that Women wish to and continue to compete and use this platform to build their skills further and spring board into careers.
Beauty according to her (Going by the dictionary) is anything that appeals to the aesthetic senses, especially the sight. She believes that the term beauty itself is highly relative. She adds…There’s a good chance that my perception of beauty might also undergo a sea change as I evolve. She does not go by the idea that only ‘inner beauty’ is real beauty. There’s nothing wrong in admiring something that is pleasing to the eyes. That does not, however, justify the discrimination meted out to people based on looks. Her argument is that if people can be praised for their talent which is inborn, then there should absolutely be no qualms about admiring a person for his/her looks, which also comes with birth. To wind up, beauty to her is both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ beauty since both have the potential of pleasing anyone’s heart.
Shivani strongly believes that a person is known by the company they keep… she says she has been blessed to be around successful, aspiring people who have helped her mould her personality and though process in the right direction. She has been successful in adopting the best from each and every association that she has had in her life and continues to do so. Being an academician, learning for her is a continuous process and she says she is always in the learning mode to grow in all aspects physical, mental, emotional, intellectual and social.
Further she adds that it is hard to imagine her life without colour. Colour plays a vitally important role in the world in which we live. Colour communicates so much. It has the power to convey moods and feelings. Colour can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite. When used in the right ways, colour can even save on energy consumption. Therefore, to justify this fact she loves all colours and in-fact actually goes ahead to follow the different colours for each day which are defined by Ayurveda.
She agrees that her participation in Mission India would definitely lead her to gain a lot of self- development, become more Confident of herself to be able to Believe that “She Can Do It!!”