La Connexion Française

Française Raj, is what we call our Probability and Statistics teacher. Why, we do so, is what this post is all about.

The E1 slot for mathematics, has been conveniently converted into a leisure hour where we pursue our interests ranging from completing "Knight tours" or "pending assignments", catching on "lost topics in other subjects" or "hours of sleep" in turn spent catching up with hostel life. So ironically, what are the odds of us battling the nuances of Probability and Stats? Negligible.

Coming to the name, Franci(a)s, as we like to call him is because he speaks like a Frenchman. Atleast, as far as the tempo is concerned. Bordering 25 syllables a second, followed by a second of welcome silence, and then repeating the same, in a cyclic redundance of 50 mins. The gentleman, true to his duty, starts the class without preamble, already uncapping the marker while he is only entering the class, and as soon as he reaches the dias, his motor nerves

launch a furious flurry of verbal and written melee attacks on the already academically sedated minds of the students, who look on with dazed expressions and suspended pens (not to mention senses) and try to keep up with him, flexing to its limit their neuro muscular co-odination.

KronoS and I, sitting at the second last bench (The safest location in the classroom, far enough from the teacher, but not so far as the "last" bench which is perpetually held responsible for any disruption of "order", although is just a prejudice...), cycle through activites like sketching, discussing world/ethereal issues, debating climatic change, coming up with theories, occasionally sleeping, plotting graphs of syllables V/s seconds for the professor or simply letting 50 mins pass to yore.

The times we tried to keep up with the Kalashnikov of syllables, we have, as a team, lost the handicapped battle. So we came up with ingenius ideas to make the class "spicy" (as KronoS likes to call it). We have tried writing with our left hand (didn't go too far, was fun although), mirror writing, random alphabet elimination, and are currently writing in landscape style in the long register, rather than the usual portrait layout. But these attempts fail owing to their inherent inefficacies. The search for the ultimate time consumer is still on.

Tomorrow I drown one moron for every syllable he utters. VIT has sufficient morons to last his 50 mins of furious wordplay. Maybe more.

Iswearifhespokeanyfasterhewouldbehumming.

Au revoir!

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