LAST year, while at the humanities department of the engineering university where I study, I read a peculiar notice. The language in which the notice was written wasn’t anything that I could decipher. So I asked around and found something that I thought was so much beyond our standards.
The university was offering language classes. Not the C or C-sharp ones, but French. As I walked away from the notice board I thought of all the chic things I’d heard about the prestigious French language. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to take the course. I returned to my friends and filled them in with all the information I had.
Bored to death with the dryness of the weather and our educational life, five out of seven agreed to take the six-week course.
We received further news about an institute where French is formally taught conducting the course. It was enough to shut the mouths that said we’d be taught Pushtu under the label of French, knowing our university.
Once the registrations began, there was no stopping us from being the first six to make an entree into the 20-student class. Not even the rusty, dusty pedestal fan of the registration room that ate up my friends dupatta while she waited to register.
After a week our course started. With a chill washing over us as we walked into the air-conditioned (rare to find) room after a hot, tiring summer day, we took our seats in excitement.
Our French professor came in, looking very French. However, we later found that he was our very own Pakistani kind, who had been studying and teaching French for quite some time. The way he spoke French was thrilling for us.
With a smile that didn’t leave his face for even a second, he taught us our first word in French, that is, bonjour, meaning hello. Now the people not knowing French (like we were) would read it ending it with the letter ‘r’. But it ends with ‘gh’, as in ghain in Urdu.
The French have this special love for the ghain sound. It’s everywhere. And you wont believe it, but French resembles Urdu a lot. Oh, that’s Ughdu when you speak, please.
The French people’s hatred for English became relevant with our professor’s rare use of English. Even that came after a lot of begging from us. He just went on speaking in French, making us stick out our ears to understand what he was saying. “No contrast between English and French,” he said. But him being unaware, my French notebook is filled with things like pgofessugh (professor) and ghose (rose, pink for French), while trying to catch up with the pronunciations.
As classes moved forward, we started getting bored. At first it was great, learning the introductions and vocabulary, it was so funny the way we had to speak after our professor, like we did some 15 years back, maybe. But when he switched to French grammar, we knew we couldn’t survive. We began quitting at least one out the three classes a week. When we took the classes, there was a God-help-me-and-don’t-let-him-pick-me-up-to-speak-French sigh under our breaths at all times.
We tried to juggle French along with other classes, tests and assignments. Some of my friends quit, others stayed.
One day I ran into one of my friends doing her bachelors in English. I knew they study French as a subsidiary subject. When I told her I was learning to speak French, she talked about it as if it was the most unimportant thing in the world.
I never went to any of the movie festivals held at the institute where French is taught. In fact, I never even went to that institute. I always wondered if watching a French movie would be fun. Then one day, while caught up in high French spirits, I saw a movie on TV that was partly French.
After watching it, I knew I was fooling myself. I had no future in the language.
No matter how hard I tired, I got a headache only after self-studying French for half an hour.
Our six-week course seemed never ending. And as we began to miss our classes due to the extremely bad conditions in Karachi, it felt like we were stuck with French forever. Because until we completed our credit hours, the Alliance Franchise wouldn’t allow an exam to be conducted, the exam that would determine whether or not to certify us with French.
Finally many days and extra classes later, we got the date for the test through our class email group, as the university was closed for summer. I spend two days studying, and at the end of the second day, found out that the news in the email was incorrect. The test was still 10 days ahead. That really made me go out of my mind. The more I wanted French out of my life, the more it was talking over.
The test day arrived. I went to the university with little hope. After reaching there, with fingers crossed, I entered the room that was to decide my fate with French.
When I got the exam paper in my hands, I don’t know why, but for the first time in my life, I knew I could excel in it even before I started. The exam relaxed me and I did great. On my way out, my professor saw the smile on my face, and said, “Mademoiselle Sana, would you like to register your name for the next levels of French?” I said, “Sir, um.. OK.” At that moment I couldn’t say no. But in my heart I knew that I wanted all the French with me to go and order French fries in France on my own.
On my way out of the humanities department where the exam had taken place, I heard someone saying, “Hey, we can register for German classes starting next week.”
Without turning around, I said, “People, I’m out of here.”
As for those who believe in kuch naya try karo, I’m long over it.
LAST year, while at the humanities department of the engineering university where I study, I read a peculiar notice. The language in which the notice was written wasn’t anything that I could decipher. So I asked around and found something that I thought was so much beyond our standards.
