<B>Mr Venkatasamy alias moustache</B>

Time is a luxury I can ill afford but I believe firmly that education is a life-long adventure. How could it be otherwise?

Education took this horny-handed son of toil to London and Oxford, a career in the Royal Air Force and eventually a consultancy in chemical pathology and a professorship. There is a saying in Africa which says that it takes a village to bring up a child. Well, my teachers are sufficiently numerous to fill a village and range from the old widow taking me for pre-school to the luminaries contributing to several editions of the ?Oxford Textbook of Medicine?.

Even now, as retirement looms, I feel indebted for what I am learning to an old and erudite Pakistani gentleman who is the chairman of my pathology department. Having passed the mark of three score years, although without the additional biblical ten but with one serious health scare and school as well as university days distant but pleasant memories, it?s perhaps not too soon for me to reflect on my teachers and declare a favourite.

My very first teacher in St Pierre was called ?Mme George?. She was my grandfather?s sister-in-law. She was lovingly strict. She introduced me to the alphabet and numbers and held my hand to teach me how to write on a slate. She was patience and gentleness personified. She was always immaculately dressed in a dark grey twin set and black patent leather shoes. Her long greying hair was pleated and neatly folded into a bun. She spoke very good French, having been brought up in a convent after being orphaned at a young age.

When I left pre-school I went to St Pierre RCA. I was able to read my grandfather?s newspapers at an early age and I still remember some of the first articles I read in ?Advance?, about a murder on the Citadel for which Pic Pac and Paul Lefou were found guilty and executed.

One of my teachers, Helene Nadeau, suggested to the head master that I should jump one class, but the suggestion was turned down. St Pierre RCA was a relaxed institution and probably there were no high expectations for the pupils. The sugar factory was a major employer and most pupils were probably expected to get a job in the factory or in the cane fields. Homework and private tuitions were unheard of but I scored 5 ?A? grades in the sixth standard examinations and headed to New Eton College in Rose-Hill.

It was a huge change. At primary school, we had four subjects and the same teacher for a whole year. At New Eton, we had a dozen subjects and encountered about six different teachers each day. The teachers were mostly young and were the best and brightest from the Royal colleges. They would spend one or two years teaching before leaving for university. What they lacked in teaching experience, they certainly made up for in knowledge.

To name but a few, there were Rex Donat, Nuvin Akalloo, Mahmoud Tally and Anand Mulloo. The teacher who left a lasting impression on me was Mr Venkatasamy, best known throughout the school as ?Moustache?. Most teachers were affectionately known by a nickname. Thus, ?Moustache??s father, the principal and founder of the school, was known as ?Bonhomme Tata?. Mr Oxenham, a veteran chemistry teacher, was ?Bonhomme Divin? for obvious reasons but there was no malice in any nickname.

In my first year at New Eton, Moustache took us for general science. This was a new field for me but I took to it like a fish to water as ?Moustache? taught us about the micrometer screw gauge, Vernier caliper, density bottle, barometer and thermometer. He also taught us how to derive the value of π (pi) from the measured radius, area and circumference of a circle. This was my introduction to metrology.

He mentioned names such as Torricelli, Galileo and Archimedes. However, I will never forget his biology lessons on the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Over a couple of weeks, he brought into the classroom a caterpillar nonchalantly munching on a citrus leaf while undergoing several cycles of moulting until eventually turning into an exquisitely beautiful butterfly. ?Moustache? was somewhat of a polymath and we met him again in Form VI for General Paper.

He was the first person I heard talking of the expanding universe and Darwin?s theory of evolution. We got on very well and later, as school manager, he gave me my first job. Unfortunately he passed away in his prime. I often think of him, especially when listening to distinguished speakers such as Sir David Weatherall at Oxford on ?haemoglobinopathies? or Professor Herbert Gilles, from Liverpool, on tropical medicine.

He was a real gentleman; handsome and always well dressed in short sleeves and tie. His thinning hair was always neatly combed back and of course he always kept his trademark moustache. He was very fluent in English, spoke in a soft voice and was a first-class teacher. He was a gentle soul, very much in contrast to his father who knew how to wield a stick and keep the pupils on the straight and narrow. For me, he opened a window on science and I have never looked back.

Father Labour, writing about his days at Royal College Curepipe, mentioned a list of his fellow pupils which was nothing less than a ?Who will be who in Mauritius?. My name dropping will never match the reverend father?s but I am proud to say that Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo was a classmate.

?Moustache? often discussed local politics with the sixth form. It was in the fag end of British colonial rule. His father had been an MLA as would his younger brother Vijay many years later. I too was interested in politics. But as a non-?Vaish? my prospects would not have been that bright.

Democratisation may be in fashion these days but we know what it is code for and it has its limits. Yours truly would have a much higher aspiration than the ministry of Fisheries, which seems to be a niche for creoles. I still remember ?Moustache? talking about ?communalisme outrancier?. For the change it makes! On a different note, I wonder what ?Moustache? would think of politics becoming a dynastic business.

<B>Dr Gerard HENRY </B> <I>Consultant Pathologist</I>