My Two Cents: Exam Results

In days long past, where poplar trees lined the backyard and bread was baked in the campus itself, with home-grown peanut butter served with it within the walls of a brick-layered dining hall… I once watched a lot of Hindi movies. 

I haven’t watched many more since. I watched those movies also because on Saturday nights, the school would show it to us on open air theaters. I didn’t have a choice. Very uncomfortable seats because the seats were basically rock cubes and cement in a mini-arena. But spending summer nights outside was nice, save for mosquitoes but we had Odomos for that. And anything on the big screen was – still is – doubly nice, even when you didn’t understand a majority of the movie. Language problems.

Anyhoo. I only remembered Roorkee movie nights because one child actor Harshaali from a movie called Bajrangi Bhaijaan apparently scored 83% in her CBSE Xth Standard Boards. I saw it on IG on the TOI page. She made a little video thanking her haters on this occasion. The comment section was brutal. It was all basic information every Indian kid knows by heart, that 83% is below average, that people score 100% routinely, that you should stop dancing and study harder, and that unless you get 90% and above, you have nothing to say.

It is a rather dull comfort to know nothing really ever changes. Comfort in the sense of knowing what’s coming, even if you can’t change it. Of course, things do get worse, but you get the idea. I don’t know how many lives will be ruined in an endless cycle of chasing the 100% score dream. In Mizoram context, we don’t push for 100% but dear lord, Letter marks! Top Ten! Topper! Good kid, bravo, now pick up more books and become an IAS or a doctor. Endless cycle.

I hope the new generation of parents would do better than the last in this regard. Common courtesy, basic etiquette, common sense, logical reasoning and empathy can take people far in life in terms of success and/or happiness and you don’t always achieve it with high scores in tests. I wouldn’t advocate dropping studies because I’ve been deeply conditioned to believe in education but I’ve started to re-think even this. My new stand, albeit still shaky, is that vocational skills coupled with basic education, especially financial literacy, is what is important and possibly more productive and attainable for the majority of people. You don’t need to be a Topper for that. You certainly don’t need a cent per cent score.

I really have no clue about the peanut butter though, and you can’t quote me on the bread either, possibly should not take my word as gospel truth about my new stand in education thirdly, but the poplar trees had really been there, in nice straight lines. Very pretty. Roorkee could be incredibly gorgeous in the right light. Unless I imagined the whole thing.

French and AV

Mlle. Sasha Rose, my French teacher, one time begged our Principal and Headmaster to screen a movie in French for us so as to improve our listening skills. They allowed it, for some reason. And so we sat and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In French but with English subtitles and we were supposed to remember at least 10 dialogues from it. Remember and note down, I think.

Which is how Audrey Hepburn’s face/voice saying, “Quelle nuit!” is burned in my memory. It means “What a night!” and this is nice because I don’t remember any other French at all from my one year haphazard French lessons with Miss Sasha. I lie. I remember like three (ish) other phrases: Je m’appelle Esther, Comment ça va? (Ça va bien!), and C’est la vie. Maybe we can add Tres bien! to the list. Ooh. Also that it is spelled Lion but pronounced Leo. Like the zodiac sign.

Miss Rose’s idea was something practiced where she was from. I never bothered to ask. She was white and she was American is all I ever knew. She’d tell us how she once spent a year in France where everyone told her how atrocious her French accent was. She said: they’re not very forgiving if you mispronounce French and act like you know French. I find that interesting. 

I think Indians in general are much more accepting if you butcher their language as long as you can communicate, however broken. Very appreciative, too, which is nice. Atithi Devo Bhava and all that, maybe. Mizo again, however, are not accepting. But we don’t get mad. We just laugh mercilessly at people who butcher the language. And then mockingly mimic them. Not very nice but it is what it is.

In my old school Sacred Heart School in Lunglei, we had these classes too. AV Class, it was called. For Audio-Visual. This was how I watched The Lion King, Dunstone Checks In, Home Alone and some other kid friendly movies. The teachers would give us few questions. Easy ones. Maybe something like: what is the name of the monkey? Or the lion? Or what is the name of the director? Something easy. Something a kid could get. We watched the movie and kept an ear out for these details. 

It is a very effective teaching method, especially in the listening part because English is not our first language and they were teaching us in English, however different the accents were. Also this listening of dialogues teach kids colloquial usage which, I find, is never redundant. It trained me to listen and pay attention to details. I don’t know if other schools currently are doing this but they should. It is entertaining and useful, both.

AV Classes are over now, my French lesson way more over. Any French these days is much less AV than it is somatic, to be sure. C’est la vie, indeed.