My lessons on advanced French over, I started teaching the euphonious language in a private school in Kathmandu. The complex French grammar is replete with ubiquitous exceptions. Expectedly, I had a deluge of ‘wh’ questions.

In French, every object is either masculine or feminine, said I. For instance, café, a widely understood word, is considered masculine, I stated. A curious yet nearly disagreeing choral ‘why’ greeted my ears, and I said I had no answer; it’s just like that and you need to know it by heart! Soirée, on the other hand, is considered feminine, I said. Second ‘why’ and I hastily resorted to the first answer.

A curious seven-grader came up with a remarkable question: What if the café drinker is female and the party animal enjoying a soirée male? Does café become feminine and soirée masculine? I am afraid they don’t! Purists as well as feminists are adamant on the rule and nothing changes, I affirmed.

Pretty unaware, the students were gamely pleased to fathom later on that long before they had even started learning French, they actually knew a score of words belonging to the language: au pair, rendezvous, raison d’être, coup d’état, aide de camp, entrepreneur, vogue, etc. “And the brand of pen you are holding, Mon Ami, means ‘my friend’.

There were other questions vis-à-vis France. “I read in SamanyaGyan that there are no mosquitoes in France,” queried one. I had every reason to fly into a rage against the omniscient writer. After all, how could I forget all those swarming mosquitoes in southern France? And how could I forgive our erudite Samanya writer for the glaring hole in his Gyan?

Likewise, a shy-looking student once reeled off: Why on earth should we learn French? One may choose not to, said I, but continued, “the mother of Raskolnikov, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment announces: the proof that my children are civilized, they speak French.”

While it may be an eternal debate if one becomes civilised after learning French or a civilised person should learn French, the message of the new French President to the would-be immigrants is loud and clear: If you wish to settle in France, you should speak French. Good grief!