B-SCHOOL BLOG
Exchanging Etiquettes And More
Exchange programme offers much more than what it is meant to be, says Vividha Kaul
08 Apr 2008
Exchange programmes with foreign universities have become a common feature in B-school campuses in India. This year at IIFT we had about six French students from Grenoble Ecole de Management and CERAM Sophia Antipolis in France, spending a trimester with us. Though both sides were a bit hesitant to begin with, the ice was soon broken, thanks to all the projects we were working on.
Soon, we were treating them to Hindi movies like Om Shanti Om and explaining the intricacies of Hindi film dialogues like "Deewaron ke bhi kaan hote hain." "Oh! You mean the walls have ears!," exclaimed Ethian in the library one day, as he sat there labouring to teach us French. While they helped us with our French, we helped them with their Hindi. They actually memorised all those rhymes that we used to recite as children. "Macchli jal ki rani hai, jeevan uska paani hai…"
Within a couple of days of working together on projects, they had all learnt to say 'Theek hai' and somehow they always knew when to say it. During the three months they were here, they insisted on having their lunch every single day at the dhabas outside the college which served spicy butter chicken and dal makhani.
Priscilla, one of the two French students, always had one query, "Do you guys always work through the night? Don't you feel the need to sleep?" We narrated our plight of having 13 subjects during the course to her as opposed to the four or five that they had to study.
In between all this, they managed to go to Amritsar and actually performed sewa at the Golden Temple. A skiing trip to Auli was also undertaken. Akshardham, Dilli Haat, Rajpath were some of their local favourites. The high point of their stay was celebrating Aurelien's (one of the French students) birthday. It was the day before the session was about to close. We had got a cake for him, but were not quite sure how he would take it -- the birthday bumps, cake-smearing, the works. He was standing in the corridor unaware of what was in store for him. Suddenly, people grabbed him and he was swinging in mid-air getting birthday bumps from all and sundry. Much to our surprise, he laughed and enjoyed all the attention!
All of us were quite sad the next day as the French students were leaving. We were not quite sure if we would meet any of them again. Oh, but long live Facebook! We shall catch them there.
Vividha Kaul is pursuing MBA (International Business) from Delhi based Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, 2007-09 batch. She worked as a journalist for three years before joining the B-School. |
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