<B>?C?est au pied du mur qu?on connait le maçon?

?It is indeed difficult to refer to one teacher as my best teacher. I feel ungrateful for not being able to talk about the half-dozen who were amazing teachers. About Mr Grassy, my one-arm teacher who took me through Standards IV to VI at St Jean Bosco RCA and who made sure through his human yet tough ways that we understood that the whole life of a human being is determined around the two principles of punishment and reward and, above all, got me one of my most important gifts, a scholarship and admission at Royal College of Curepipe.

This was an invaluable gift for a boy coming from a poor family. Then, there was Robert D?Unienville, the genius who made maths complexities look so simple. Daniel Koenig who taught me the rigour and beauty of French while Georgy Noel made sure we mastered proper English while allowing the words of Keats and Wordsworth to reach both our heads and feelings. Ah, and obviously Noel Assarapin who over four years gave me the love of life forms and the mysteries of their multiple expressions, his drawings on the blackboard giving even the frog an artful beauty.

Since I regretfully have to settle for one, it will be Roger Perdreau. Not because of his striking physical resemblance to Louis de Funès including his visual expressions and apparent fits of anger, but for his dedication to teaching us chemistry. Turning up a few minutes late for his class once and the only time, and upon hearing my apologies that I was coming from the biology class of Assarapin, he exclaimed a loud ?Pff! Biology! Chemistry is more important, chemistry is the foundation of biology!?

Profound sentence for a 16-year old, that led me to reflect for a long time and got me addicted to reading scientific American articles until now. His anger was terrifying but his smile and horsey laugh were so human. One day when I laughed at a classmate at a loss to find the right answer, Roger Perdreau sent me to the blackboard, stood a few feet from me tapping his heavy shining reddish brown shoes and commented with a grin, ?Ha, ha, c?est au pied du mur qu?on connaît le macon?. A lesson in humility! We had nothing but respect for Roger Perdreau. He had the fatherly formula, ?you fear him? but he could make you feel he cared for you and your success. He was a bachelor, may be after all, he did consider us as his children and gave his best to us. He instilled the principle of rigour in us, the principle of hard work.

As far as I know, he never punished anyone. If he was very angry with someone he would rather quote a proverb that would send the person off to think about himself or his act. I do not remember anyone who was not eager to attend his class, so much could he distil out passion and generate fascination for these formulae, these experiments that made you feel like you could be a magician or even an alchemist. The power of seemingly inert substances.

I remember seeing him only once after having left school. It was about 20 years after. I was already a member of Parliament, yet it was the same interaction. The same respect for him, the same feeling of uneasiness on approaching him. He had the same sparkle in his eyes.

Roger Perdreau, Noel Assarapin, but equally Prem Burton, Wan Hok Chee, Jesseramsingh are the many amazing teachers for whom teaching was a vocation and they did more than fill our heads, they made us men who could be men, they made us good citizens, they made us the independent thinkers we have all become.?