From previous experience we strongly recommend that candidates hailing from vernacular medium schools opt to study in institutions where the medium of instruction is bilingual. Our reputed Open Shelf Library has only English reference/text books and journals for all subjects other than vernacular Bengali and Hindi. Examinations will have to be answered ONLY in English. This is what the announcement said: “The medium of instruction in Loreto College is ONLY English.

Admissions to undergraduate courses began in West Bengal on July 1. My childhood prejudices found a naked face earlier this week when a premier Kolkata institution, Loreto College, openly announced that it is shutting its doors to students who are not from English-medium schools. I knew I had to find my way to the right side of the road, where jebras were zebras and Madhuri Dikhit would not even figure in conversations because, who watches Hindi films? I eventually did find my way to a right Park Street college, but that’s a different story. We desperately wanted to be seen as English-medium kids with the right accent and pronunciation, and we knew if we didn’t try too hard, we would be seen as one of “them”. More so, for students like us who were actually caught in between. Othering students from Bengali-medium schools was almost like a rite of passage for students who wanted English-medium lives. I went to an English medium missionary school with a questionable reputation on the wrong side of Lower Circular Road (the arterial road that runs through Kolkata). Why couldn’t we have that posh pan-Indian accent that most of my Delhi and Mumbai friends have? Or closer home, what kids from the right English medium schools and colleges of Kolkata did.

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Bengali alphabet when to use