part of the answer to the clue of 15a, took me down memory lane as I reminisced Monsieur Trojak teaching me the difference between ‘en’ and ‘dans’, the prepositions, both meaning ‘in’ in French, in one of the classes of my first semester at Alliance Française, Calcutta where I had enrolled myself for learning that language. The year was 1979 and it was really a struggling time for me when, for the first time in life, I found myself getting engaged for eighteen hours plus from Monday to Friday. I used to come out at around 5.30 am so that I could reach school well in time to attend my classes of the higher secondary level which would start at 6.00 am. I used to come out of the school at around 9.00 am; missing at least two classes so that I could attend office which was fortunately a ten minutes’ walk from the school. In the evening, after office was over, I used to attend my French classes or watch French movies in the auditorium at Alliance Française and after that, I used to go to a far-off place to give tuitions to some students, only to return home always after eleven o’clock at night. Saturday used to be a half day at office. I used to spend the rest of the time on Saturday and the whole of Sunday by giving tuitions and by revising my own lessons pertaining to the higher secondary classes. Although those days were very tiring, but today I feel glad that I was able to keep myself engaged and make the best use of my time. Now, coming back to the rhythmic ‘en’ and ‘dans’, both signify time and location, but their usage relies on both meaning and grammar. ‘En’ indicates the length of time an action happens or when an action happens that is related to month, season or year or followed directly by a noun not preceded by an article. ‘Dans’, on the other hand, denotes the amount of time before action will occur or refers to something that occurs within or during a decade or when followed by an article plus noun or with some states and provinces preceded by an article.
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