English, Professor!

There are those famous jokes about the way Gujaratis speak English – snack-snakes; hall-hole, etc. For 21 years in Ahmedabad, I had never come across any Gujarati who spoke that way. However, sometime in 2004, while on my train to Pune, a Gujarati girl scared the shit out of me when she said, “My bag is full of snakes.” It took some seconds to realize what she meant.

My point being, English is a very funny language. Just a slight twitch of a syllable and the entire context changes. And professors are those species who have the knack of using it in the weirdest ways. Forget the ‘open the windows and let the airforce come in’ under-grad jokes. We are talking about the use of English language at the Masters level. And when it comes to DCS, you are sure to chance upon some real gems of phonetic bends.

Here, every professor has a distinct style. Let me begin with Mr D – the same not-so-beloved professor who taught us the basics of Mass Com. His tragedy is that he often gets confused with the long 'eeee' and the short 'i' in words. The result – some absolutely new meanings emerging out of bland sentences and many embarrassing moments…

The beginning – innocent and forgivable…

Media is a very complex subject. To understand it completely, you need to pip into the nuances. (peep into the nuances).

For a class that would dig double-meaning in every sentence, this was perhaps their best chance…

This was during our class trip to Goa:
This is such a rare sight – so many goats on a bitch!!! (beach)

After this one, girls were ready to kill him!

While talking about the Press Council of India:
It’s like a paper tiger with rubber *** (teeth)

But this is just the teeep of the iceberg. Once you seeeet in his class, you’ll realize how torturous things can get! His tongue sleeps was too much :P