My last article appeared on February 7. Somewhere in my twisted soul, I hoped that I would be missed in that one week when no article appeared. But there wasn’t an avalanche of despair from a notable readership asking after my well-being. That taught me a healthy lesson in humility.
Two deaths during this period left me disconnected and confused. I could not function creatively, nor could I understand or explain my surreal disconnection with reality. Both persons had done so much to set me on my long journey on the path to English as a curricular and personal choice. And nothing they had taught me could help me deal with their death, and the awful truth that “sceptre and crown/ must tumble down/and in the dust be equal made/with the crooked scythe and spade”.
The first death was that of Abu Desai, English teacher supreme, who joined the staff of the mewling newby, Alexander Sinton, in the 1950s. In those days, we were the high school of second or third choice.
We were vying for academic credence against such behemoths as Trafalgar, Livingstone, Athlone High and Harold Cressey. If you are a survivor of that period, you are a senior citizen, a geriatric, a dinosaur or a has-been. Most of all, you are a survivor from those early years when teaching was so much more than it is now.
Desai left me with one bit of advice which contributed to whatever success anyone would assign to your humble columnist in the field of literacy. On the last day of school in 1955, he said to me: “Now that your school days are over, you can stop reading books.” I almost had a cadenza.
This from a doyen of the king’s language, a prince of the spoken language of Shakespeare and Chaucer. A man who led me patiently through the complexity of what was called “Setwork” in those halcyon teenage years. Who explained that the last six lines of a sonnet was the sestet, and from there nurtured us to clarity of expression, the conviction of ethics and the no-no of being sesquipedalian just to sound erudite. He saved my sanity by completing his injunction: “Stop reading books and start reading authors.”
What a man! What a scholar! What a jewel in the crown of academia! He left Sinton shortly after that to become vice-rector of Hewat Training College. He died at the ripe old age of 92. I can never thank him enough, nor achieve enough to validate what he saw in me that set me going on the happy roller-coaster of aesthetics and literacy that survives to this day, almost 70 years later.
The other death was that of Claude Stevens, a friend of almost 70 years. He was, by choice, an accountant, but he had the good sense to understand that man’s experience of himself resided in words, not numbers. Granted, the normal lifespan is 70, 80 if you were strong. But somehow, he and Abu went beyond those arbitrary numbers. And although Abu never met my erstwhile friend, he shared in providing the spur that pricked the sides of my intent. Stevens encouraged me to study beyond two year’s teacher training at Hewat. More than that, when he saw my natural bent for English, he had the following words of advice: “When you read English at the level you are targeting, it might be an idea to read some philosophy.” I ended up dabbling even in Anglo-Saxon.
There is my muted shout-out to two great scholars. To them I owe the discovery of textual relevance, of text and sub-text and eventually meta-text. Yes, I am waving a flag. I wave a flag and salute the two linguists who gave me a career, who convinced me that the key to a meaningful life rested on the ability to read.
May they both find peace in where they are.
* Alex Tabisher.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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