Girl students encouraged to read, pursue their interests

Every beginning comes to an ending but every ending also comes to a beginning. University of Stockholm Prof Emeritus Dr Ishrat Lindblad said this as she spoke to female students of the Indus University at a workshop on Thursday morning.

Dr Lindblad, who teaches English literature to varsity students, said she has to teach how to write logical, coherent and academic essays. There’s a principle that when one has to say anything in the essay, they have to begin with an interesting statement that will, in some way, sum up what they want to do, she explained.

She was the chief guest at the workshop, the title of which was ‘Communication, Innovation, International Relations and Keys to Success’. The title of Dr Lindblad’s session was ‘Beginnings and Endings’.

She said so many successful stories can be talked about which became possible only due to education. She also explained the advantages of reading literature as it improves the thinking skills of the readers.

“When you read, the first time you read, you are absorbed by the plot, by the characters, and you want to see what’s happening next. When you come to the ending of a book, it’s like coming to the end of a journey where you have lived through the minds and thoughts of a number of different people.”

She said that she truly believes that every book teaches how different people think in different cultures and how to disagree with people in a civilised way. “There are many different views to everything and that things can be regarded from two different perspectives,” she said.

Dr Lindblad recalled how once she was in a boarding school in London and there was a teacher of history whom everybody was very frightened of because of her being very strict and demanding. One day, the history teacher was giving a lecture on the Indian mutiny of 1857 and explained it entirely from the British point of view. “There was no mention of what was happening to the Indian people when British Empire was in many ways very brutal and unfair,” she said.

When the class was told to write an essay after the lecture, Dr Lindblad said she wrote an essay on the Indian mutiny from the Indian point of view and shared how the Indians were punished with many examples of the British brutalities that she had learnt from her family, many of whom were members of the Congress party.

She said during a class in the next week after she had handed in her essay, the history teacher praised her essay and informed the class that the most important lesson she could teach in the history was that there are two points of view for every event. “She [the history teacher] thanked me for teaching her [that],” Dr Lindblad said and added that her essay was read out aloud and given nine out of 10 marks.

“That teacher remained with me in my heart all my life because she taught me something very important that whatever you say, there’s another perspective,” she said.

The chief executive officer of the Troy Group of Companies, Yasmeen Dadabhoy, shed light on ‘Challenges Women Face in the Workplace’. “The biggest challenge [for a girl] is when she comes to the world,” she said. “The first question is whether it’s a girl or a boy.” She said only a few families happily accept the fact that a girl has been born.

In schools and colleges, she said, the girls have to constantly face this question what they will do after getting education. “Marriage, children and? I have serious objection to this ‘and’,” she said. “Why girls are not asked what they want to achieve in their lives.”

She recalled that her brother was always asked what he wanted to do in his life and he used to answer that he would handle his family business. “Being born in a business family, everybody thought of me as a privileged child,” she said, adding that it was generally expected that she would hold a position in the board of directors but this was not acceptable to her.

The biggest struggle for her was getting an admission to a coed university after completing her primary and secondary education from a girls school. “[I come] from a very strict Memon background, where studying in a coed was a big no,” she said and added that she was granted the permission on condition that she would have to wait a year for her brother to get to the varsity. At the university, she graduated with honors in marketing. “If girls are given opportunities, they move ahead,” she said.