Dr Aadil Zeffer, a PhD scholar from North Kashmir’s Bandipora district has won laurels for Kashmir for being selected as cultural ambassador to the United States of America under prestigious Fulbright Scholarship programme.
Cultural ambassadors are responsible for promoting the culture of their home country to people from other nations. They may do this by giving presentations, writing articles or essays, creating videos, etc.
Hailing from Ashtangoo village of the district, Dr Aadil’s inspiring journey is of hardwork and of commitment and perseverance. He struggled to pay his school fee. He did not have money to buy books. Now, he is an internationally experienced English teacher, having more than five-years of teaching experience in India and abroad.
He has hundreds of certificates to his credit, including Ph.D. in English , M.Phil., Master’s Degrees in various subjects, CELTA from University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, CIF from CEBP France, CIS (ELE Spain), CIL (Parola Italy), FDC (KSA), CRSE (Russia) and CNS (IIT Kanpur).
Talking to Rising Kashmir Aadil said he received his elementary education from his native village and joined Bandipora Degree College in 2010 during which he got his first book published.
After completing graduation, he moved to Aligarh Muslim University where from he completed his masters and later moved to Saudi Arabia for M. Phil programme.
Aadil has around 500 academic certificates to his name and has received his education from eight countries. “I have registered in the Guinness World Records given my number of academic certificates and hopefully I will make it,” he added.
He is the author of the book “An Educational Supplement” and his second book entitled, “Convergence” is under process.
He is also working on another book “Postmodernism” which he said is his thrust area.
He occasionally colours his imagination by writing poems to reputed journals and tries to reach a larger audience.
Aadil has also published a number of research papers in international as well as UGC care-listed journals.
Besides academic life, he is very fond of travelling and has visited the United Kingdom, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Monte Carlo, Netherlands, Spain, UAE, KSA, and Vatican City.
Aadil has seen some really challenging and tough situations also.
He worked as a manual labourer at many places till his graduation and all his brothers have also faced a similar situation.
Aadil could very well recapitulate the testing times in their family when they all had to work hard to make both ends meet. His brothers had to give breaks to their educational journeys due to the non-availability of fees in which all of them lost some precious years.
Aadil said his admission fees for his 8th and 12th were paid by his two uncles although the admission fee was just Rs 500 and the money for the practical books was paid by one of his neighbours.
At this gleeful moment, Dr Aadil misses his sister who he lost due to non-availability of proper treatment due to financial hardship.
He said he has funded all his educational journey along with his brothers by himself as there was no earning hand in his family. He still remembers the blissful moments, when small amounts of money were contributed by a good number of generous people to meet the printing charges of the book.
With all this, Aadil said he believes in hardwork, sincerity, passion, perseverance and most importantly belief in Allah. He credits his success to the Almighty’s generosity, his teachers, friends, family, Aligarh circle and all those who helped him from time to time financially and emotionally.
“I wish all the youth a wonderful future and request them to use their time judiciously by focusing on their studies to carve a niche for themselves,” he added.
