at a session in the ongoing times litfest 2021 where she launched her latest memoir how i accidentally became a global stock photo author shubnum khan took us along on her journey through life in conversation with authorcolumnist natasha badhwar the journey not an easy one was thwarted by social presupposition inequality stereotypes trolling loneliness depression apartheid and bias but also selfdiscovery as it transformed her into the person that she is today fighting her way through life shubnum shared how she was declared a tragedy at the time of her birth for being the fourth girl child in a patriarchal muslim household but decided against it right now i just know that i was supposed to be a tragedy but i am not writes shubnum in the concluding lines of the first chapter of her new releasethe wide spread misogyny that shubnum fell a prey to also haunted natasha after she became a mother to three daughters in her book my daughters mum she shares the overwhelming amount of misogyny that still exists in society and how her writing like shubnums came from the pain that she felt when she saw the disappointment in peoples eyes questions of identity have been extensively explored in shubnums new book as she writes about her life where she had to struggle to get out of the boxes that she was put into and carve a niche for herself challenging stereotypes and perceptions that confined her shubnum talked about growing up in the severely segregated south africa where apartheid was so vehemently imposed that she had little or no idea about the existence of other races apart from her own in the countrythe incident from which her book takes its name how i accidentally became a global stock photo happened at college where she signed up for a photoshoot as part of a college project but found her picture on every billboard hoarding and place where it wasnt supposed to be the breach of privacy that she had to face was greeted with rumours insults and trolling on social media where she was called reckless and stupid for having let the incident happen putting an end to all of this shubnum decided to write about her experience i wrote a series of funny stories only to realize later that it was actually one big story about becoming brave says the authorher journey through depression and loneliness while she was in china was a stepping stone towards achieving selflove as she now realizes in retrospect solitude she believes has helped her see herself as her own person and cultivate a healthy relationship with the self it was only then that her struggle for an identity came to end i ended up being single in a society where your whole existence quite often is placed within where you stand in society whether you have a husband or not whether you have children or not but i didnt feel like that should lessen my story i