Books, Business and Comedy: How Tanzila Khan Makes Inclusion Practical

To understand the breadth of Tanzila Khan’s work, consider what she has chosen to create: two novels, a youth organisation, a menstrual healthcare platform and a short comedy about disability. The list is unusual, but it is not random. Each project asks who gets to participate, whose needs are considered and who has the opportunity to tell a story on their own terms.

A Pakistani author, entrepreneur, filmmaker and disability rights advocate, she has built a career across fields that are rarely brought together. Her projects are informed by her experience as a wheelchair user, but their relevance is much wider. They examine how everyday services, institutions and stories change when people with disabilities are considered from the beginning.

Miss Khan’s first public platform was fiction. At 16, she wrote A Story of Mexico and later published her second novel, The Perfect Situation. According to her official profile, proceeds from the books supported community projects connected with disability, education, women’s empowerment and the environment. Writing therefore became more than an individual achievement. It gave her a way to support work beyond publishing.

That community focus continued through Creative Alley, an organisation she founded to help young people develop life skills through theatre and storytelling. The initiative created opportunities for learning, performance and self-expression. It also reflected an idea that would remain central to her work: people should not only be represented by others; they should have the tools and space to speak for themselves.

Her move into entrepreneurship began with a routine healthcare need. While travelling to an investor meeting in Lahore, she got her period and could not find a nearby shop that she could enter in her wheelchair. The experience led her to create Girlythings.pk, which developed into a website, mobile application and hotline providing urgent and regular menstrual kits across Pakistan. The platform offers a more private and independent way to obtain essential products when disability, limited mobility, distance or social restrictions make visiting a shop difficult. Although the idea came from her own experience, it can also benefit someone recovering from surgery, living far from a market or unable to leave home easily. Its value lies in a simple piece of good design: a service built around an overlooked customer can work better for many others.

The venture also connected two conversations that are often kept separate. Menstrual health is still treated as an uncomfortable subject in many communities, while accessibility is frequently considered only after a service has already been designed. Bringing the two together allowed her to address privacy, mobility and healthcare through one practical platform.

Her next major project focused on representation. In 2020, she wrote, produced and played the lead role in Fruit Chaat, a short comedy about a wheelchair user navigating education, employment, entrepreneurship and relationships. The film is designed for any viewer, including someone encountering her work for the first time. Its central character wants meaningful work, personal independence, companionship and the freedom to make her own choices.

Comedy is central to the way the story works. Disabled characters are often presented on screen through pity or exaggerated inspiration. The woman at the centre of this film is intelligent, ambitious, opinionated and aware of the patronising behaviour around her. Her wheelchair is neither the joke nor the source of every problem. The humour comes from employers, strangers and others who make unnecessary assumptions about what she can do.

In Dawn Images’ coverage of the film, she said she wanted to “portray disability in a very ordinary and comical way.” That choice allows the story to discuss discrimination without reducing its lead character to a tragedy. She can be capable, funny, impatient and frustrated, sometimes all within the same scene.

The production carried some of that humour into real life. The team filmed the short in Lahore in one day and completed the editing in two. During the shoot, a police officer stopped the crew after mistaking one of the scenes for real begging. They had to explain that they were actors making a film. The incident closely reflected the stereotypes the comedy was questioning.

By writing, producing and performing the lead role, she retained control over the portrayal. That authorship is important because meaningful representation is not only about placing a disabled character on screen. It also matters who writes the character, makes creative decisions and performs the role.

Her work received international recognition in May 2022 when she became the first recipient of the Prince’s Trust International Amal Clooney Women’s Empowerment Award. Amal Clooney presented the award at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales, attending the ceremony.

The official award profile published by The King’s Trust International recognised Miss Khan for improving access to menstrual, reproductive health and maternity products while advocating for women and people with disabilities. The organisation now uses The King’s Trust International name, although the award carried the Prince’s Trust International name in 2022.

The award gave her work a larger international audience, but its importance is easier to understand through the projects themselves. Her novels helped support community initiatives. Creative Alley gave young people opportunities to develop their voices. Her healthcare venture turned an overlooked problem into a working service. Her film allowed a disabled woman to be funny, ambitious and fully in control of her own story.

What connects these achievements is not a conventional story about overcoming disability. It is a method of working. She identifies where participation is limited, considers what would make the experience more equal and then chooses the right form for the response. Sometimes that form is a book. Sometimes it is a business or a film.

Her impact can be seen in ordinary outcomes: a young person finding a creative platform, a healthcare product reaching someone who cannot enter a shop and an audience seeing a disabled woman presented as a complete human being. These moments may appear simple. Making them ordinary is precisely the point.