Rendezvous avec une experience magnifique

 It was my first class at 'Alliance Francaise' after a long time, three years, to be precise. The long walk towards the quintessential Gothic 'Khaleel Manzil' from 'Ravindra Sadan' was a pleasure, since it was garnished with a collage of cherished memories of my rendezvous with French, three years back.

I was reminded of the incident, when I missed the first class, for watching 'Spiderman' at Inox & the utter joy of finding out, that the sweet girl who I thought was a fellow student, was supposed to be our French instructor, Mademoiselle Paromita. I remember the hilarious event when the mere inclusion of an extra letter in a sentence,  made the class erupt in a roar of laughter, courtesy, 'moi', who uttered the not-so-utterable 'Je t'aime' instead of 'J'aime regarder la television', in a class 'activite'. The camaraderie that existed was pure and I think I should thank my stars, for such talented batchmates who turned out to be great friends too. It is here, when I mention 'friends' that I think I need to make special mention of the guy who I thought, was a Frenchman, in his past life - Monsieur Soudipe (yeah, that's how the fair 'bhodrolok' from Chandannagore - once, a prosperous French colony, spelt his name, for which I blame his obsession with anything and everything that was 'French' or related to France).

The class was a huge success as far as the 'enjoyment quotient' is concerned. However, I was least bothered about French grammar and more concerned about the overtly interesting French vocabulary. The 'French feel' , the French movies, the library with its huge stock of books, of which I dared to read a volume of 'Asterix', once (rather, 'tried to read', to put it accurately), the 'fete de la musique' where we sang 'Aux Champs Elysees', the sensuous 'La femme chocolat' by Mlle Paromita, the lady who was my inspiration, the birthday of our batchmate Sohan -who was a cute little precocious teenager, at that time, and my attempt at some creative calligraphy on the white-board, the tall 'Frenchman' with a beard, Deepanjan, who shocked me again when he revealed that he was infact a Bengali...... everything, just everything about the 'Alliance Francaise' days, has been etched in my memory and is something 'inoubliable'.

The wooden staircase of 'Khaleel Manzil', the multilingual and multitasking Salim da, and the once haunted Bimal villa (which had a creaking door and scared me out of my wits when I had reached early, one fine day, only to find an empty AF), which now shines beneath a fresh coat of bright red paint, were some of those few elements which existed back then, and still do.

It's with such fond memories and hopes of more such unforgettable events, that I have begun another journey, which was cut short earlier, and I hope to do justice to every bit of the 'Francaise' soul in me :)

'Bonne chance' to me !!! & cheers to Alliance Francaise !!!