At this point, the thought pops into my head that I should probably explain the title of my blog.
Business French was one of the most popular electives among my batch of 2nd year Wimwians (a term which case study writers use to describe IIMA students, and to make themselves sound cool). The reasons were manifold.
- The young and the not-so-young folk of the campus wanted to impress the native speakers of the language during the upcoming exchange term in France
- ‘Parlez vous Anglais?’ sounds sexier in an Indian accent than ‘Do you speak English?’
- It was classified as a ‘fraud course’ by many who weren’t going on exchange or anything, but wanted a chill course in the 2nd term
If you’all were expecting our French teacher to be a tittering Gallic dame gushing over every other word like Fleur Delacour, now is the time to put that right. A certain Ms.Petal (name changed to protect identity) was the one taking us through the basics of the language, and she was exceptionally sweet about it as well.
Now, some of the dudes in the class were having a good deal of fun through the entire course. A classmate, who blogs here, allegedly couldn’t stop staring at Ms.Petal as she waxed eloquent in the language of romance. The story goes that he had his mouth open and eyes bulging out through an entire lecture, towards the end of which he made faint panting noises, upon which Ms.Petal couldnt pretend to ignore him anymore and accused him of ‘checking her out’. Allegedly.
And then she told him his marks would be “Directement Zero” (Directly Zero, loosely translated), if he continued the behaviour.
Ms.Petal started using this phrase so often that everyone found it funny – whenever some dude wasn’t focusing on the topic at hand – French – she threatened to bring him directement to zero and thus made it her signature of sorts.
I hope this blog would be as random as they come, without sticking to any particular subject, minus the bane of focus, devoid of the millstone of a topic or an albatross of a theme hanging around its neck. (But yes, with several terrible metaphors). And Ms.Petal if she ever reads it would look flustered and say, “Puny blog, with your pathetic lack of focus, your marks are directement zero!”
Directement Zero 