The story of my French book......

2008-05-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

Like many students who choose French as the second language in Standard 11 because it is a scoring paper, I too opted for French in Higher Secondary. That it was a great escape route from Tamil (my weakest subject) is a matter I do not wish to elaborate.
We had a text book comprising ten dossiers which was meant to be used for both 11th and 12th standards. Since it was an imported book and was priced high, most students took a photocopy of the text and got it spirally bound. But being the over-enthusiastic student that I was, I got the original imported book, covered it neatly with laminated brown sheet and labelled it. I love to fuss over books……..
French as a subject is fairly interesting, very exotic (feels super-glamorous to say that u r learning a foreign language) and the level of French we were taught at school was so elementary that none would actually get knee wobbles because of it.
A week before my 11th Standard final exams, one Saturday morning, I was studying for French exam. When I was in the middle of the 4th dossier, my maid kept calling me for breakfast. I wanted to complete what i was doing lest I’d lose the flow. So I kept reading and went to bathe. Oh, did I mention that I study in the loo???? Okay, I have this habit of studying in the bathroom and it was a daily practice during my exams. As usual my text book also came to the bathroom. Bath and Dossier 4 done, I happily went for breakfast and moved on to a different subject.
An hour later, there was a blood-curdling scream. I rushed to the loo and found that it was my maid holding a brown lump. No prizes for guessing what it was. It was my good old French book. I had left my text in the laundry basket and had also thrown a towel over it. My maid soaked the clothes. Little did she know that nestled amongst the clothes was my French text.
The book was a dripping mess. The cover was partly sticking on to the binding; the binding was almost crumbling and was barely holding on to the rest of the book. The pages were soaked in patches, the sides were fully sodden. I had written all the translation and exercises in the book religiously with pencil and exam was not even a week away. A chill ran down my spine. I tore the cover, threw the binding and saw that it was still possible to retrieve the book. Used the hair-drier and fanned the pages dry. It took ages to do it and the pages sort of felt a bit brittle and crisp. Once completely dry I kept it under the mattress and left it for a day. Covered the book again with laminated cover and though it was not as good as new, none of my writings disappeared nor did the pages get torn and the book served me for another year till I finished school.
Like one should look at the brighter side of things, I just thanked my lucky stars that the clothes weren’t dumped into the washing machine and tumbled dry and that the book was bound. The thick binding was indeed a boon.
What I felt at that moment is something like this joke I read somewhere. Here goes…
Little birdie flying high
Dropped a message from the sky,
‘Oh’, said the farmer wiping his eye.
Isn’t it great that cows don’t fly?
Moral of the story: Read your lessons in the bathroom if you so desire but don’t ever leave your text in the laundry bucket ; )

2008-04-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

Hullo......
Am awfully excited abt creating a blog corner for myself after all this while..........
Been wantin to do this for a verrrry long time but kept thinking that i was the busiest soul on planet earth Moreover with limited access to the internet, it didn't happen....
Anywayz, here i am finally...... Thanx to a whole lot of frenz n bloggers who inspired me to start blogging.
Hmmm... Should come up shortly with something interesting. Got my thinking cap on...Watch out this space.
Cheers,
Srinidhi

A slice of life!

The story of my French book......