The joy of living in a small town is that it allows you time to pursue what your heart desires. And if that object of desire comes with a price tag of Rs 720, you have little option but to grab the opportunity with both hands.
When Satish, my partner, heard that the Viswa Bharati University was offering a two-year certificate course in foreign language for a sum of Rs 720, he decided to enrol. He filled an admission form and before long sat for an entrance exam. After battling tough questions — name two cities of France besides Paris — he waited for the results. The fact that most of the other students took him to be a professor who had come in to invigilate (till he sat down to write the test beside them) amused him. But the thought had stayed. So, even when he topped the entrance exam, he was convinced that the ranking was according to age!
Till, of course, the classes began. Since the academic standard of Viswa Bharati University is deteriorating by the semester, the students it now attracts are basically from mofussil towns in and around Santiniketan. Except for the fine arts discipline, all others have given Tagore’s vision of an open university an insidious burial. The students who enrolled for a university course in French had so little English on them that mastering even basic French was a huge strife.
Most of the students seemed to have enrolled not for any love of the language, but for a notion that it would ease their efforts to get a job! But as the class progressed and they realised that enhancing their CVs would come at a huge cost, they began to opt out. At home, friends, who had heard of this middle-age endeavour, started inundating us with French movies to watch, which would now be considered a must to improve vocabulary and pronunciation.
Many of the French visitors to Santiniketan who visit the cafe that we run, soon learnt of this effort and started contributing their bit by talking to us in monosyllabic French! Anyway, with a little help from friends, two years passed and the certificate exam was written. Burdened as the university is with charges of malpractices by the bosses that be, many strikes called by staff, sub-staff, students, Ph D fellows, gardeners, sweepers etc, it took a whole year for the results to be published.
Embarrassed by the rather high marks that he seemed to have got (considering he still could not speak any French), he did ask the professor whether he was a lenient man.
Actually, even before the results were out and it was known that all the students had passed, classes for the diploma course, subsequent to the degree course, had already started. Satish, probably on the merit of his high marks or advancing age, had become quite the fulcrum for his entire class. Very often, the cell would ring and it would be a fellow student enquiring when classes were scheduled (Viswa Bharati is closed so often and classes are so few and far between that there could be no written schedule). And strangely, much of the conversation was in Hindi probably because of the rising number of students from Bihar, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh.
One morning when the phone rang while we were having breakfast and it was somebody from his class, I couldn’t help overhear. The lady at the other end was enquiring whether classes were held the previous day and, if so, what had been taught. “We started Moh-pa-sson,” said Satish. “Kya bola aapne? awaz thik se nahi aa rahi hai,” came the reply. He realised then that to aficionados of French in Santiniketan, Maupassant is not a household name!
