<B>Trilock Dwarka, Chairman of ICTA</B>

I shall never say that I owe it to anybody to be the person I am today. The input from my teachers constitutes the software but they can hardly be blamed if there is anything wrong with the hardware that I am! And we have to wait till the last breath to assess that correctly.

The original teacher in life for me as for many others is the Mother and knowledge for most Hindus is Sanatan Dharma-based: notions of heaven and hell, angels and the devil, rituals, moral values, Ramayana and Mahabharata and so many basic notions stem from her. This creates a corpus of knowledge on which the rest is grafted. I find I still have a conscience but, for the rest, doubts have crept in though I still admire the Hindu rituals which position you within the universe and its planets at the start of any Yaj.

At pre-primary level, I still remember with fondness Mrs Jouvria and Soeur Vianney who saw my parents with the aim of converting me to Christianity because it would seem I was a handsome boy at that time. Some shades, I hope, still persist? At primary level, my memories would settle on VIth standard times at St Paul RCA. My teacher, Mrs Vellin, had a magnetic personality with Michèle Morgan looks, excellent French diction and a refinement reminiscent of a Dickens character, Mrs Havisham of Great Expectations. I don?t know if my romantic energy springs from that class, which was infested with local beauties!

Anybody who attended Bhujoharry college in the early seventies will tell you that the experience gained there allowed for a quantum leap in their lives. Daniel Marion, Ho Chan Fong, Bashir Khodabux, Ranjit Foogooa, Alex Bhujoharry, Doobay Ramprogus and James Burty David were some of the teachers who made us understand that we were the post-independence generation that would each carve a place for himself in a country just emerging from colonialism. But for me, one teacher stood out.

From Mohenjodaro and Harappa civilizations to inklings of the 21st century, hovering between the lives of great gurus - Mahatma Gandhi, Sarvepalli Radakrishna, Krishnamurthy (Rajneesh was never far away) and a myriad of issues - that was the core of Oumashankar Hawoldar?s classes, the main subject ? Economics ? being relegated to a side issue. We were however in a mode of expansion beyond the strict syllabus and could only relish this broadening of our horizons which would arm the Bhujoharrian student to face life. Raj Dayal, Raj Makoond, Siram Sakaram, Ashok Aubeeluck, Sen Narainen, Azize Bankur, Jerôme Boulle, Jacques David, Soorooj Phokeer and others bear the seal of Mr Hawoldar on their intellectual makeup.

Siddhartha?s father had a towering intellect and would have made history had circumstances decided otherwise. He made an incursion into politics but was angry with the sectarian pressure exerted on SSR and once asked: ?How can these people say they represent such and such a group when I?m sure they don?t even represent their wives!? With him, one can safely say that life?s poetry never sank to prose.

Otherwise, I was quite a playful boy at Curepipe College and I owe the pursuance of my schooling there to the charitable attitude some teachers took of some of my manners. I have most gratitude for one Mr Bissoon who guided me on my educational path thereafter.

As for unsavoury experiences, there were two. One teacher snatched from me an unusable lead pistol my father had brought back from his Army days and never returned it despite my pleas. The other was a lazy teacher who would take a nap and ask the class captain to make us recite for 30 minutes, with different nuances: ?Curiosity kills the cat? but the cat does not kill the curiosity!?