I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s across three Indian cities — Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai. I speak Marathi and Tamil and can comprehend Bengali. In Class VIII, I chose French as a third language. We were, I remember vaguely, lured by the promise of a “high-scoring subject” and a language in which you rolled your Rs and pouted in a satisfyingly sophisticated manner. After struggling with vyakran and kaarak, French grammar (the bane of Enid Blyton’s oh-so-English girls) was a breeze. Our textbook, a 1930s relic we called the Mauger Bleu, depicted the Vincent family in fascinating detail: M Vincent, always with a lighted cigarette and sometimes clutching an important-looking briefcase, Mme. Vincent, perfectly coiffed, endlessly shopping for groceries or hosting lavish French meals, the children Pierre and Hélène, whose clothes, body parts, school satchels, and classrooms all provided us with long lists of French words to learn, apart from a tantalising glimpse into French life.

My love affair with languages had just begun, though, because in high school, I started amassing French proficiency certificates at Alliance Française, and in college, I began frequenting Max Mueller Bhavan, signing up for German. By the time I had joined my master’s programme — MA French at JNU — my philological hunger only grew, and I joined a language........

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