Most of us spend a good part of our lives trying to figure out who we really are. We pick a lane, we stay in it, and we quietly wonder about the road not taken. Shravani Dang never had that problem. For thirty years, she held a corporate career and a creative life in both hands at once, and she never once let either one go.

VP at Avantha Group leading global communications and marketing. Independent Board Director. Trustee of CAF India. Polyglot, painter, art collector of three decades, founder of ArtAdda, culinary historian, short story writer, and bon vivant. The list is long because the life has been long and full and entirely on her own terms.

When I sat down with Shravani on The AboutHer Show Season 4, I expected someone who had figured things out. What I did not expect was someone who had never seen them as separate things to figure out in the first place.

“Creativity can be in anything. Look at our old homes, from the door knocker to the handle. How beautiful these things were.”

Two Lives. One Woman.

The conversation started where it had to. How does a person hold a high-powered corporate career and a rich creative life in parallel for thirty years without one swallowing the other? Shravani’s answer was disarmingly simple. She never saw them as opposites.

She pointed to the iPhone sitting between us. Not just useful, she said, but beautiful. She talked about old homes in India and around the world, from door knockers to handles, and the artistry that went into every small thing. Creativity, she reminded me, was never confined to a canvas.

When she rose to VP at Avantha, she brought that sensibility into the boardroom. What did the artist in her add? Thinking out of the box, she said, finding ways to reach the numbers that were a little more empathetic, a little less predictable. And then she said something that I keep coming back to.

“Women bring balanced leadership to boards. If you add creativity to that, you are actually beating your competitors because they are not using these two things.”

The Studio That Became a Movement.

Three years ago, Shravani looked around Gurgaon and noticed a gap. Delhi had Triveni, Mandi House, Kamani, the Habitat Centre. Gurgaon had galleries but no one gathering place where artists of all kinds could simply come together. So she built one. In her studio. No money changed hands. No hierarchies. No backchat.

Artists, jewellery designers, tattoo artists, street sketchers, anyone with a connection to aesthetics was welcome. A year ago, Museo Camera gave ArtAdda a permanent home. Today, she is booked out three months in advance.

The tagline came from a friend in advertising, Kiran Khalab, who spent time with the community and listened. “Where everyone listens with their eyes.” When I told her I had actually paused when I first read it, she smiled. Most people are not good listeners, she said. But when you look at something, and then look again, you see something different. Even in art, sometimes you shut one eye and the whole perspective shifts.

“Where everyone listens with their eyes.”

Food, Memory, and the History on Our Plates.

Shravani’s childhood table was full of stories. Her grandmother talked about the Tagore household experimenting with cauliflower when it arrived in Bengal in the 1800s, brought by a British man who first grew it in Saharanpur. The family cook, Imam Mia, who had worked with a British commissioner, made shepherd’s pie and Anglo-Indian chicken roasts alongside home-cooked Mughlai food.

Also Read- She Rewrote History

She took her mother back to her birthplace in what is now Bangladesh. Her mother pointed out a tree, a creeper, and talked about a spice used before the Portuguese brought chili to India, something peppery and a little like wasabi, now rare and expensive and found only in that region. Shravani wrote it all down. She started a Facebook series called Eat Your History. Her book on culinary heritage is mostly written.

“India absorbs these things and makes them ours. That I think is the one most wonderful thing that we can do.”

The Elephant in the Garden.

Her short story collection is called There’s an Elephant in My Garden and it is, in the best possible way, exactly what it sounds like. Her mother grew up in the tea gardens of Assam. There was an actual elephant. Her grandfather had a pet panther who came every evening for milk, and once, while he was away, a wild panther turned up and was mistaken for the pet. She grew up with a rescued tiger cub and a baby deer that had to be fed on goat’s milk, which required considerable negotiation with the goat herd.

She told these stories to her children as they grew up. Her children told her she had to write them down. And then she said something that made me stop.

“People pay so much to go on a safari, and yet when they see a dog on the street who is hungry or thirsty, they won’t help.”

The human and animal divide, she said, is growing bigger and bigger. The stories, she hopes, will find their way to readers who might soften a little, who might find empathy and compassion for all creatures big and small.

What She Carries Forward.

When her first lifetime achievement award arrived, she took it as a signal. Time to give young people space. Time to move into things that pleased her rather than things that were required of her. She now has, as she put it with a quiet delight, the luxury of time and no targets.

But no targets is not the same as no ambition. She is preparing a new exhibition. She is finishing two books. She is building ArtAdda session by session, month by month. And when I asked her what the woman who sat in boardrooms has to say to the woman who paints in her studio, she answered in three words.

What’s my next challenge?

Near the end of our conversation, she said something that has stayed with me since.

“This bonding with women who have similar attitudes and values is giving me a lot of joy.”

Not the awards. Not the titles. The women. The community. The room where everyone listens with their eyes.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. You do not have to choose between your corporate self and your creative self. They are not opposites. They are allies.

2. Balanced leadership plus creativity is a competitive advantage most organisations are still leaving on the table.

3. Building community starts with knowing what you do not want. No hierarchies. No backchat. Start there.

4. Food is history. The stories on our plates go back centuries and most of them have never been written down.

5. The luxury of time, when you have earned it, is not a reason to stop. It is a reason to go deeper.

6. Joy, at this stage of life, comes not from achievement but from finding your people and building something with them.

Not just about her. It takes all of us.

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