"There were a number of teachers especially in school and then later in university who influenced my choices of courses and subjects and disciplines in which I later specialized.

I think my school teachers above all - some of them were Irish missionaries, others were local teachers from different states of the country - were the ones who taught me to think for myself and to be courageous enough to express my opinion, not to be afraid and also to think about other people. I suppose that is what led me to become a teacher myself.

Today I am a teacher, a professor of communication at one of the Institutes of Ahmedabad in India. Earlier, I was a professor at the University of Brunei and most recently I was at Deutsche Welle to talk to the students of the “International Media Studies” degree course.

My love for books, love for learning, love for young people, I think all this came from my teachers in school and college who were so caring in their ways, so scholarly in the way they presented their subjects. I especially remember a professor of history and a professor of literature, who I think passed these values that I have today on to me, because I didn´t have much of a family to get values from.
I am a refugee from Pakistan. We lost much of our family, and when we came over to India, we had to begin from scratch. My father never went to school and I was perhaps the first in my family to become a graduate and to get a doctorate and also to become a professor."