Alphons Ernst Oesch was born on 12 October 1911 in Switzerland and did his schooling there and studied to become a priest in 1934 in a seminary located in a suburb south of Munich in Germany. He then went to Heytrop College in London to learn and speak chaste English while studying philosophy. Jesuits are renowned all the world in the field of education. So, he volunteered to teach in the schools in India soon after he was ordained in 1937.
My Tribute
Many people talk about destiny and everything being preordained. Strangely, life for me has rarely been a straight line but more of unexpected twists and turns, a series of accidents, happenstance and quite often dumb luck.
I was one of those kids who knew early in life what I wanted to be. But getting there seemed to be a problem because I was hopeless in science and maths, so being an engineer or a doctor was out of the question. I wanted to follow in my Uncle's footsteps and become a Naval officer. But my marksheet in school seemed to suggest that I would likely become a greengrocer.
My Dad was a Judge and was subject to transfers at the drop of a hat, every two or three years, just like I would be in the Indian Navy, many years later. Imagine having to change my school syllabus from CBSE to SSC to ICSE to SSLC to HSSC and making new friends every two years. It was a torment. In 1971, my Dad gave up the judiciary prematurely and left Nagpur to settle in Pune. I was admitted into the 9th Standard in St Vincent’s High School, where he too had studied. When I finished the first two semesters, my report card was full of red lines. My bone marrow would freeze everytime I had to get my report card signed by my parents. Luckily Mum and Dad would only encourage me to do better next time, without breathing down my back.
Tuitions were expensive. My parents had arranged for extra tuition in German, Marathi and Maths, but I found every subject equally challenging. Armed with a ridiculous smile on my face and two ink pens I use to wade into battle with my maths and science papers but always ended up with answers that had pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles.
The PTA meeting at school turned out to be an unpropitious encounter with much asperity from my class teacher. I was feeling like the receiving end of a B-52 Bomber strike when I marched into the Principal's office for a mid-term warning. The only important question running in my head at that moment was would I be decapitated before I hit the deck or after. But the Principal, Fr Romauld, let me off with a smile saying "if you don't improve your marks in maths and science, I will personally escort you to the 8th standard, where you can convalesce from your bout of temporary low mental IQ.”
As I fretted about my incompetence, ineptitude and incapacity, an answer arrived in the form of Fr Alphons Oesch, who became my class Teacher in the 10th Standard. He found me shy, introverted and withdrawn from the other petulant little brats in my class. Fr Oesch would take extra classes after school hours, without charging a dime. He would patiently explain every weak student’s difficulties, give assignments and correct their work without any compensation. I have never ever come across a Teacher with such dedication, tenacity and zeal for his students.
Once Fr Oesch took all the students of the 10th standard to a picnic to Tiger’s Leap in Lonavla. We took the early morning train and reached Lonavla just as the sky stretched a web of red capillaries between bright white clouds from a golden sun on the horizon. On the way to the cliff, he pointed out birds, flowers and insects of all varieties, each with their biological name and distinctive features. Atop Tiger’s Leap cliff there is a small hollow close to the edge of the cliff top. He lowered each student into this pit, one at a time and gave us an opportunity to look over the edge of the cliff. We returned home safely without any incident.
On one Sunday, Fr Oesch asked for two volunteers to help him clean the school’s fish tank on the second floor of the building. Two of us raised our hands. We had to carry buckets of water from the huge fish tank mounted on a high pedestal, which he was emptying, and pour it down the drain in the bathroom, a little distance away. On one such trip my friend noticed some people standing directly below the window on the ground floor and emptied a bucket of water on their heads. Any other school Teacher would have punished us with brimstone and fire. Fr Oesch took a few moments calibrating the extent of our hostility and threw us a glance which I could have framed. He then sent us to apologise to the people downstairs. After the fish tank job was done he gave us each a slab of swiss chocolate, the likes of which I hadn’t tasted before.
Looking at me now, if I told you that I had more than half a dozen certificates for first and second positions in the Pune Inter-school annual sports championships, you would probably laugh. Fr Oesch was perhaps best known for outdoor activities. He trained me and dozens of other kids to run the 110 m hurdles, the 100 metre sprint, triple jump, high jump and troop games like basketball, football, baseball, and other track and field events. St Vincent’s Pune had a reputation of leading the other schools in sports for over a hundred of it’s 150 years of existence.
I approached him before my Final Board examination to guide me on how to study for the school leaving certificate. He drew up a time table to revise all my subjects everyday, giving emphasis to the weaker subjects. The result was unbelievable. I scored 92% in German, 96% in sciences, and 91% in maths. Strangely, I got just 51% in English. Apparently, the examiner didn’t think much of my English or most likely didn’t appreciate my sense of humour. But I couldn't have excelled in school without help from Fr Oesch.
After leaving school I went back to Fr Oesch to help me prepare for the Services Selection Board for entry into the National Defence Academy. He immediately wrote a letter to the Commandant of the Army School of Physical Training, who was an ex-Vincentian, to allow me to train on their obstacle course. After practising on the obstacle course for three months, I was fully ready for the physical test in Bangalore. It wasn't a surprise when during the allotted time of three minutes I completed the entire course flawlessly and also repeated the three most difficult obstacles, thus earning the highest marks in my batch of candidates.
We continued to exchange letters for many years after I left school. I would visit him in his room which was rather spartan and looked like a wartime Bomber command. His table used to be covered with exercise books for correction, there was a heap of letters from many of his ex-students stacked up neatly in one corner, which he would be replying to and he had a table fan that wouldn't start unless he hit it with a hammer.
When my wedding was fixed I requested Fr Oesch to con-celebrate the wedding mass with another favourite priest, Fr Cyril Desbruslais. He gladly agreed and married Sandra and me in the City Church, Pune.
Come to think of it, given half a chance, older boys in my school would go around putting landmines in each other's underpants. And then, there were other kids whose parents, seemingly, had amputated their brains when they were seven years old, because it wasn't uncommon to see them carving up the furniture with cycle keys or throwing water balloons at the girls in the school across the road.
While some teachers proffered an expression of alarm that seemed to herald a heart attack at any moment, the tougher ones dealt with mardy, bad-mannered and rude kids with a slap on the face. But not Fr Oesch. There was a power in what he spoke and how he looked at people and that power transformed young boys.
As young mischievous boys we would often scream and bellow in class, as if protesting the 1971 war, slam our school desktops loudly, make tropical monkey sounds and throw pieces of chalk all over the classroom before the teacher entered the class. Fr Oesch would just scrunch his bushy eyebrows and portray a picture of sadness, the likes of which could melt even a stone heart. It seemed that he believed in the dictum of thinking twice before saying nothing. That incredibly silent posture, freighted with meaning and implication, brought discipline even to the naughtiest child in the class. Don't for a minute underestimate this giant of a man who was over six feet tall and had broad shoulders, that he couldn't beat the shit out of any bully. That for me, was integrity, holiness and greatness, all rolled into one.
People have often wondered what holiness and greatness look like. And yet, holiness and greatness are quite ordinary. Holiness is a normal, ordinary life lived with integrity. And Greatness doesn't necessarily have a great personage, it isn't dressed in the latest fashion. It is not necessarily eloquent. Greatness just has a certain simplicity to it. And I found these qualities in Fr Oesch.
