A hundred memories of school in Bombay were evoked with Valmiki mentioning the famous Dondo textbook. See : http://texts.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb229003hz&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00018&toc.depth=1&toc.id=
The Dondo was the standard French text book of the time and while Valmiki absorbed a part of it in one month of summer, we took all the academic school years from grades 7 to 11 to complete it. Learning French as a second language in St Xaviers school in Dhobitalao was in retrospect one of the hilarious episodes of boyhood. We had to take one second language with a choice between latin, french and sanskrit. Most of the class took French as it was the easiest. Those earmarked for the priesthood by the Jesuits fathers were subtly coerced into taking latin, They were a handful - merely 5 or 6 out of 200 students of the 3 divisions of one grade class. About 20, mostly orthodox Hindu lads took Sanskrit while the rest of us defaulted to French. For the senior grades we had Paul Frank a cheeroot puffing Goan teacher. By his admission he learned French as a shippy on some French liner. While most of the teachers were postgraduates (or graduates in North American parlance), Paul Frank was barely a matriculate. Why he was hired in the first place I never figured out. Paul Frank lived in Kavarana building on top of Sassani restaurant in the heart of Dhobitalao. People who knew him outside of school said he was a polite and courteous gentleman, but to us students he was a veritable mix of Hitler and Dracula. We had to learn the Dondo almost by rote and were not allowed even a slip in our parsing and spelling. That would have meant a heard whack anywhere on the upper torso depending on what mood he was in. I finished school with a French distinction. Thanks but no thanks to the Indian school system where I could write an essay fluently in the language but I couldn't speak it to save my life. Whatever little I could speak, would never have been understood by any Frenchman. It wasn't until in the Gulf after I took a conversational course at the Alliance Francaise, that I could speak what I should have spoken a long time ago in school. Paul Frank's pronunciations were atrocious. So were those of the other French teachers in the school. It didn't help when in my last year, Paul Frank died and and his position was hurriedly filled by a Spanish speaking Jesuit Fr. Teressa who couldn't speak much of either French or English. Oh for those glorious days! Roland. Toronto. > A HUNDRED ROSES IN BLOOM… > By Valmiki Faleiro The Silvas evidently were men of great intellect. Prof. Eduardo was second of five brothers. The eldest, Prof. Joaquim Silva, between unending sticks of the choicest tobacco, taught me, in about a month of summer vacation from the Loyola boarding school, the standard French text, Dondo, cover to cover. Amazing how my dense mind lucidly absorbed what I absolutely abhorred while in school.
