Mathematics is not easy for everyone. Some take to it naturally, as a fish to water. And then, there are others who plough through it as though serving a life sentence! Father Vincent Vaz, our Mathematics teacher in High School, endeared himself to both groups. Going back in time by four decades to erstwhile Bombay, Fr. Vaz was a pioneer in High School Mathematics. His books on “Modern Maths” were hugely popular.
Back then, the 10th standard board exam was a student’s litmus test. His entire future hinged on that single exam. And no subject was a bigger stumbling block than Mathematics. Fr. Vaz worked with us for an entire year, in addition to a crash course designed just before the boards. Dressed in his immaculate white cloak, Fr. Vaz was a master magician. Such was his command over the subject and the effortless ease with which explained esoteric concepts in Mathematics, Algebra and Geometry.
His classes were peppered with humour. “No answer is complete without proper units!” he repeated ad nauseam. To hammer home the point, Fr. Vaz cracked his favourite joke pertaining to units. A student had to make a sentence with the word “centimetre”. He wrote- “My mother was at the station and I was centimetre!” In an instant, the class was filled with laughter!
If it was too quiet, he had a way to liven up the class. “Students! You are half-dead! In English, you can also say, you are half-alive! But in Mathematics, let’s see what happens to this equation!” With that, Fr. Vaz wrote on the black board in bold strokes- “half dead = half alive”. With a mischievous twinkle in his eye, he grandly announced, “You can cancel half on both sides of the equation, and what are you left with?” He paused for effect and proclaimed, “Yes, in Mathematics, dead is equal to alive!”
In addition to Mathematics, Fr. Vaz gave 5 minute pep-talks on topics like- “How to study” just before classes started each day. The tips are relevant even today. His note on “recapitulation” for instance- a new topic taught in class should be revised within 24 hours. It will then be firmly committed to memory. “If you lose that window,” Fr. Vaz would say sternly, “You have lost that entire topic for good!”
He gelled with students as his anecdotes were often borrowed from the world of sport. Someone asked Sir Garfield Sobers how he became one of the greatest Cricket players. Fr. Vaz was transformed into Sobers himself! He held the entire audience in suspense before revealing the cricketer's secret in monosyllables, “I made mistakes, but I never made the same mistake twice!”
About a decade ago, Fr. Vaz passed into the ages. Sometimes, I search on the internet and stumble upon an old photograph of his. The mind floats back to those days in school, sitting in that class, surrounded by those faces, elbows perched on the desk, palms cradling the face and eyes glued at Fr. Vaz!
As we used to say, “There never Vaz, is, or ever will be...someone quite like Fr. Vincent Vaz!”
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