The Montfort Chronicles

This is the final instalment chronicling the life and times of Frenchie – teacher extraordinaire and meanest human specimen (late) this side of the Greenwich Meridian.

Frenchie was a righteous bastard where grades where concerned. He took so much obvious sadistic pleasure in failing his students. You could be fucken Balzac himself and Frenchie would still find a way to fail you. Marks above 70 were unheard of. More than 50% of his cohort failed French. And the bastiche reveled in our pain. Frenchie also constantly claimed that the official Guides to the French textbook ( Cours De Langue et de Civilization Francaise ) were a plagiarized copy of his own work. Apparently, his work had been stolen by one of his students and found its way into the hands of one of his rival teachers, (some bigshot hotshit teacher in Chennai) who promptly published it the next year. A load of bull, I thought at the time. But hey, Frenchie’s like fuckin Adidas. Nothing is impossible.

Frenchie’s glory days where he commanded utmost respect and induced shit-your-pants fear soon waned. His prowess declined, the fame of his name became obscured behind a generation of new teachers. Frenchie was relegated to has-been status. Granted, no-one still effed around with the guy, but he had started drawing a few sniggers and lost a few supporters. There used to be a time when Frenchie was considered a cool guy. He’d thrash the living daylights out of you if he caught you copying or swearing or any other behaviour considered reprehensible by his standards. But he was always anti-establishment and would shield you from Princi and the whole fucken system. However, he turned traitor (ref. Bio book case) when we reached 7th standard. In his favor, it can only be said that he was part of the system and had to work from within it to change it. The moment of his crowning glory (thrashing-wise ) came when he half –killed D’Cruz to obtain the name of the other guys involved in the infamous “Biology Book Debacle”. But this is the subject of another story which we will not go into here.

This was the beginning of the end for Frenchie. For every guy who argued that Frenchie be canonized, there was a guy who said he should be hanged, drawn and quartered. The arrival of George Kalangod as Princi only accelerated the fall. George Kalangod Jason was a vainglorious bastard with a God complex that would make Jesus Christ himself question his self-divinity. His megalomania knew no bounds; he wanted humankind to deify him. Frenchie was flabbergasted at finding an ego to equal, if not top, his own. There was no room in Montfort for both their egos. Princi tried to micromanage Frenchie’s life, which irritated the shit outta him.

Our 10std was Frenchie’s final year at Montfort. We were his final batch, his last innings. This was the year of the France World Cup. Frenchie stayed up nights watching Zidane et amis raise hell and roll over opposition. When France won the Cup, he was so fucken proud. Like he was actually French or something. Quel Merde!

Soon the toothache started. Frenchie would get these stupendously bad-ass toothaches. He never showed much pain, but talked a lot about root-canal and other painful sounding procedures, in addition to disappearing for days at a time for treatment.

In ’99, finally fed up of all Princi’s shite, Frenchie decided to pack up and leave.Or so it was rumoured .Go to Chennai or Coimbatore or Pondi; away from all the ego and the madness. He did leave; disappeared for whole weeks. Theories abounded; treatment, alternate job, mistress (?) etc. His wife ( he had a wife. I know, crazy shit) continued to work in Monty. Attempts to glean info on Frenchie’s whereabouts from her received vague responses. The nature of the Frenchie-Mrs Frenchie relationship has always remained a mystery. He obviously loved her, and once told me how he’d toned down his evil bastard image and stopped thrashing students so much cos she told him to.…Anyway, he just upped and vacated, no goodbye, no speech,nothing. I never saw Frenchie again.

A year later, I get the news that Frenchie’s passed on. Whether to eternal damnation or to God’s left hand, we will never know. The details of his death are as shrouded in mystery as the JFK shootings. Apparently, the man committed suicide. I find this a hard swallow, seeing as how much he loved life. Motive remains unclear. So too does modus operandi of the suicide. I will respect his memory and avoid morbid speculation.

However, Frenchie was not done yet. He reached out from the great beyond and played his final ace. News reached us that a week after his untimely demise, his wife’s pregnancy was confirmed. Sacrebleu! The legend was gone, but he’d let a little something behind. Despite the putative lost testicle, Frenchie was apparently man enough to bequeath a legacy.

That’s all I know, folks. He was a great man, charismatic and brilliant. He influenced everyone he came in contact with. He was a bastard to some, a genius to many and a legend to all. He died at the peak of his game. I guess sometimes it is better to burn out than to just fade away…