Mr. Francis taught class nine English Language and I happened to be in his class. Mr. Francis was a tall broad man, biggishly built, wore khaki trousers, a black coat, a gown, and a hat all through the year and carried several handkerchiefs; a different set for each nostril.
He also carried a sling bag and no one knew what he carried in that. Mr. Francis had taught in the school for many years and my siblings many years older to me had been tutored by him. He was a milestone of memory for the school.
Mr. Francis’s entry into the class would evoke uncontrolled giggling at a controlled decibel level; it appeared as if the class was taking a break for comic relief. Mr. Francis appeared like an entity from a different time zone and this pack of 14 years old were clueless on how to react to his presence. To cut this story short Mr. Francis was a huge admirer of the English Language and the art of writing essays. He would insist that we should cultivate a skill to write an essay on any conceivable subject.
So all through the year we never wrote on anything conventional like My Hobby, Ambition, Holidays, Best friend….we only practiced writing essays on a chair, table, season, cow, staircase…I remember him saying put life into the inanimate and see what it is trying to say. His mantra for teaching the grammar of language was…hear what you write if it sounds right…it is right grammar — four decades from then makes all this sound so right and engaging. This entire reasoning fell flat on our young teen minds then, and in our collective teenage wisdom thought Mr. Francis was archival material unleashed upon us.
On the other hand around the same time from the large eclectic library that we possessed at home it was another quaint Penguin (1942) publication that captivated my interest A Book of English Essays edited by W E Williams. In our home where fiction was looked down upon one had to find some refuge in stray books which peppered the shelves like these. W E William’s collection of essays to which authors like Charles Lamb, G K Chesterson, Richard Steele, Aldous Huxley et al had contributed on subjects like Walks, A Few Thoughts on Sleep, The Darkness, Why We Hate Insects, On Defence of Shyness…
All these essays were reinforcing on my mind what Mr. Francis said in school; an essay is a collection of thoughts on things that you see, feel or experience. We were asked for days to practice an essay on a Chair, and at the end of the week we all had interesting essays on the life story of the wood used to make it, some wrote on its tedious life, some on its occupants and some on the designs that defined chairs.
What we understood at the end of the week was that no single perspective defines the ultimate truth.Mr. Francis is no more but these illustrious writers and their essays live through the Kindle and some limited old paperback editions. The legacy that has been left behind by Quaint Mr. Francis is my indefatigable love for essays as a form of writing in the age of constant twittering.
