I SPENT a good portion of my childhood desperately trying to fit in. This meant tearful conversations with the parents about wanting turkey sandwiches for lunch instead of the kabab paratha roll. My mother said deli meat in white bread wasn’t food and said the kids making fun of my “smelly food” had no idea what they were missing. It would take me 20 years to realise she was right but at nine years of age, you just want to be ‘in’ with the white kids, always in a majority wherever I was. No one asked them where they were from.

I don’t know when asking where you’re from turned into a problematic question. When I first heard someone say this, I didn’t quite understand why but felt a sigh of relief at not having to explain Pakistan. I’ve never been able to reply to why I speak good English, or why I look or dress the way I do other than say Pakistan is diverse. I brushed off someone’s curiosity as just that and didn’t realise I was feeling offended by their ignorance. Because I was never ignorant about their identity. At grad school, however, my young colleagues made me realise such questions were not about me but about the questioners’ perceptions. Or rather biases.

‘Where are you from’ is such a universal conversation starter. It was an ice-breaker all those years I used ride-sharing apps in Karachi or standing with strangers at a work event or party. Or, first day in class. When someone says Quetta, I tell them about how much I loved conducting media training there. The same for Bahawalpur which really is in my top three favourite cities in Pakistan. I’m asking because I’m trying to build a connection with someone.

But what do you do when someone tells you that question is a microaggression because it has the potential to alienate someone, make them feel they don’t belong.

Before entering a new class every semester, I turn to previous students to ask their advice on what I should do more of, less of and so forth. Thankfully, no one wants me to stop using GIFs but one student wrote to me privately and asked me to be mindful of the power dynamics. You may be asking out of curiosity but it can come off as why are you here. “While you didn’t explicitly say that, you still spoke from a place of wow you made it here from [small place in small province] which allowed classmates to other me.”

Inevitably our biases — and we all have them — are challenged.

I was gutted to hear that I had somehow exotified her. How did I miss this when I struggled with the burden of representing Pakistan, or Muslim womanhood when I was in school? I also thought issues of identity politics were the exclusive realm in the West, where such questions were more loaded because what was really being asked was ‘where are you really from?’ Your passport or where you were born did not matter; you don’t look American or British or whatever. Was I giving my students the impression that I didn’t think they were Pakistani enough?

That is the risk you take when you ask for feedback — you won’t always like what you hear. It was a harsh reality check.

I have to be more aware of my privilege and position as an instructor and ensure I’m not making someone uncomfortable with my questions. Friends felt I caved in many years ago when I stopped addressing my students as ‘guys’ after a woman said she felt excluded when I used a masculine origin word. I agreed because I didn’t want anyone to feel excluded. Teaching is also about us learning to adapt to change.

One sign of chan­­ge is more diversity in my classrooms — ethnicities and beliefs. Thanks to families’ upward mobility, migration and scholarships, hi­­gher education is not just the purvi­­ew of the urban eli­te. It’s an incredible learning oppor­-

tunity for both the teacher and the students as they work together on assignments. Inevitably our biases — and we all have them — are challenged. One has to remind them that empathy will make us better journalists.

I am especially curious to hear what they think of this debate on the smaller provinces. I’d like to start by examining who started this debate and why now, especially when we have a history of movements demanding separate provinces in south Punjab, or urban Sindh — some may remember the controversy around MQM and the Jinnahpur map. What communities get demonised and then accepted? We have to also question who gets to ask the question and who gets to answer it, or whose voices aren’t represented in decisions that will impact them? Why is Punjab’s division OK but not Sindh or vice versa — for example. I hope that I’m training a new generation of journalists to ask the right questions and demand answers.

The writer is a journalism instructor.

X: LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, August 31st, 2025