Note: There are 6 Pages about Mac. Please read in the following order:
Mac – Wilfred Joseph McMahon – Introduction
Mac- Wilfred Joseph McMahon – Origin and Early Years.
Mac – Wilfred Joseph McMahon – The Stalwart Who
Mac – Wilfred Joseph McMahon – The Post-Lovedale Years
Mac – Wilfred Joseph McMahon – From Rugby to Ruin
Mac – Wilfred Joseph McMahon – Then and Now
Come 1975, Wilfred Joseph, by then the Senior Master was eased out of Lovedale by the then Headmaster Vyas. Vyas was no mug; he wouldn’t have been too happy about Wilfred Joseph’s smoking in the presence of pupils, his frequent absences away from Lovedale and gambling at the Lawley Institute.
After leaving Lawrence, Mac joined Horsley Hills School in Andhra Pradesh as Principal. The school had only recently been set up by characters called the Reddy Brothers. It was nowhere near as prestigious as Lovedale but beggars cannot be choosers and by 1975, Mac was certainly a beggar with no money, no family, no accommodation anywhere, no prospects and all his sophistication (playing cards with the Generals, Lawley Institute etc.) down the pan! Only ‘country fellows’ populated Horsley Hills. Further, Mac was surrounded by Telugu speakers. Mac’s remuneration package was on the basis of profit sharing rather than a regular salary. Mac was a good English teacher but as far as assessing a business was concerned, he was out of his depth! As a business venture, Horsley Hills School was failing and Mac was unable to make a living. He tried but failed to persuade my friend Nick Horsburgh to take his place at Horsley Hills. Nick was running a perfectly good school that was based on imparting education and not for profit purposes.
Desperate and poverty stricken, Mac turned for help to his old colleague from Lovedale, Iyengar who had become Headmaster of Vikasa School in Madurai, Mac was given a job at Vikasa for a few months but he struck it lucky as Iyengar, with the help of an old pupil from Lovedale, Senthil Kumar got Mac the job of Principal of K.V. S. English Medium School in Virudhunagar, founded in 1976. As it happened, K.I. Thomas Headmaster of Lawrence School when Mac was a member of staff there was involved in laying the foundation stone at KVS English Medium School.
Below are photos of the foundation stones of Horsley Hills School and KVS School
In KVS School, Mac settled down as Principal with job related accommodation. He gained popularity with his students, all Tamil speaking, by resorting to techniques he perfected at Lovedale. He held his classes in the sun and put on plays reminiscent of Lovedale where he held sway for 19 years. He also encouraged students to be aware of ‘the news’ by putting up a map of the world in his office and getting students to recite news reports and point out where in the map the news reports originated.
Below are photos of Mac during his stint at K.V.S English Medium School; note how he starts posing with his students in a reasonable suit, followed by no suit in the next two photos and finally in a shabby suit when special guests visit the school. What a come down for a character who used to pose in immaculate suits with smart boys dressed in Sunday Kit at Lawrence School Lovedale.
Outside school hours, there was nothing for Mac to do. There were no people of his ilk to fraternise with, there were no clubs, no cinemas showing English movies, no Anglo-Indian community and all of the residents of Virudhunagar spoke to each other in Tamil, of which Mac didn’t know a word. His only relief was to venture into Madurai some 35 miles away for lunch and drinks at the Fortune Pandyan Hotel where an old student of his, Joseph Valikappan was the General Manager. Mac managed to do this return trip on a Vijay 50 cc bike, very dangerous on a busy highway what with heavy lorries and careless drivers also using the same route!. In terms of food, Mac’s only treat was when the wife of his old Lovedale student Senthil prepared non-vegetarian food and had that sent over. The dreariness of life caused Mac to resort to booze. Lots of it! Indeed his apartment became a den of inequity! Local boozers, in particular two characters, one called Pandirajan and the other Pugalenthy took full advantage and satisfied their ‘thirst’ there!
Old habits die hard and against the wishes of the great and good of Virudhunagar, Wilfred Joseph smoked in front of pupils. Mac had found a position at a modest day school, K.V.S where the pay was a shadow of what he had once earned. No longer able to afford his preferred cigarette brand, he took to rolling his own cigarettes—pinching tobacco into thin papers with the practiced ease of a man resigned to life’s dwindling luxuries. Yet even here, his stubborn attachment to smoking in front of students proved his undoing. Such was Mac—a man of sharp intellect and sharper habit, out of step with the times but unapologetic to the last. Gone were the days when characters like yours truly would bring him tins full of State Express 555 cigarettes! All efforts to dissuade him from smoking in front of children failed.
The drinking and smoking did not go down well with the great and good of Virudhunagar. Their reputation was at stake! A smoking, boozing ‘teacher’ was setting a bad example to the children and so on the 30 April 1985, 60 year old Mac was eased out of K.V.S. School. His popularity with the students he taught remained though, and even today we are reminded of that popularity as his photo (in reality probably a painting) adorns a wall in the Principal’s office. There is also a block in the school named after him. To this day his former students, now well into middle age still reunions! Please see photos below:
Wilfred Joseph was desperate for money and approached the Headmaster of Lawrence School Lovedale, Bhatnagar for a job. Wilfred Joseph had hosted Bhatnagar way back in 1961, 24 years earlier, when the latter had come over to Lovedale on a course sponsored by the British Council. Alas Bhatnagar couldn’t offer him anything at Lovedale but introduced Wilfred Joseph to a Mr. R.K. Krishna Kumar , a top executive of Tata Tea. K.K. as he was known initiated a school project for the children of Tata’s Tea Estates in Munnar. Wilfred Joseph was offered Headship of the school and grabbed it with both hands!
The job wasn’t difficult as the school concerned was a Primary School from class 1 to class 4 and the children were those of the Tea Estate workers. Thus, after school hours, Wilfred would be the first to arrive at the bar/pub and would be the last to leave. Among his drinking friends was a Mr Oomen who I met when I stayed at the Ooty Club as he was the Secretary there. Mr Oomen is a friend of my classmate and friend Viju Parameshwar with whom he played badminton and also had the occasional tipple. Tata had a policy of retiring employees at retirement age which in the case of Wilfred Joseph was shortly after he reached 65. This was in 1990.
65 year old Wilfred Joseph had nowhere to go, no money, no accommodation and was in no fit state to teach at any ‘prestigious’ school such as Lawrence. He had been out of practice and his past reputation was worthless in Lawrence which he had left 15 years previously. His old saviour Iyengar, by now the director of Jeevana School which he had founded, came to Wilfred Joseph’s rescue once again and offered him a place to teach English. This was Wilfred Joseph’s last break. The salary couldn’t have been enough to finance Wilfred Joseph’s lifestyle which included cigarettes, alcohol, small motor bike etc. In April 1991, Wilfred Joseph aged 66 arrived at Lovedale offering to ‘help’. Such help was declined.
Back it was to Madurai. Two months later, in June 1991, Wilfred Joseph attended Church Service and was on his way home on his clapped out Vijay 50 cc bike. He was involved in an accident with a bus. He was rushed to Hospital in the very same bus. By this time, a Mr. Gunnaseelan, who had worked as a teacher with Wilfred Joseph turned up and held Wilfred Joseph’s hand. The last words of Wilfred Joseph were to Mr. Gunnaseelan, ‘pray for me’. Wilfred Joseph’s last hours were spent in a hospital run by an Old Lawrencian of the 1958 batch Dr. Mohan Nadar. Wilfred Joseph passed away on 23 June 1991.
Desperate attempts were made to contact any family Wilfred Joseph may have had. His two nieces , Linda and Melanie (the latter was settled in Canada) didn’t want to know. Wilfred Joseph had a few shares in Tata given as part of his remuneration package but the nieces weren’t interested. Nobody wanted to claim the body, so it was Mr Iyengar and Subash Valikappen (formerly Joseph Valikappen, head boy of the 1965 Lovedale batch) who took on the responsibility and after ascertaining that there was a Catholic Cemetery that the Anglo-Indian Railway Colony of Madurai used, arrangements were made to bury Wilfred Joseph there. There were just 2 people in attendance; Iyengar and Valikappen.
Wilfred Joseph, born into an Anglo-Indian Railway Colony was buried in an Anglo-Indian Railway Colony cemetery, albeit the two Railway Colonies were a thousand miles apart. Had it not been for Mr Iyengar, Mac’s body would have been either cremated or buried in a pauper’s grave as ‘unclaimed’. Following the burial, there was not a single visitor to the grave between 1991 and 2024 and it was in the process of crumbling. My curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to know what happened to Mac who had a devastating impact on my life. Nobody, neither Senthil, nor Dr Mohan Nadar nor indeed anybody at Jeevana, the last school Mac taught at, knew where Mac was buried. It was only after I managed to contact Dr. Ramesh Iyengar, son of our teacher M.S. Iyengar that extensive enquiries were initiated by him and the burial place traced. It was Ramesh who then got to know that the grave was dilapidated and was unrecognisable. Ramesh got maintenance staff at Jeevana to refurbish the grave and put flowers on it.
Below is the photograph of the grave which I took
The words on the Grave Stone are: On the Vertical stone: In Sweet Remembrance Of A Bygone Day There Is A Cherished Memory Time Cannot Take Away
On the Horizontal stone:
When strident memories fade
Into a sepia-tinted ache
Echoes of the cadences will remain
Crafted modulated words in its wake
When we gather to think. to feel to add
In spirit, in the nuances of an alien tongue
Where we gleaned chivalry, quixotic jest
Vowels enunciated, odes recited, hosannas sung
Where even my muse stirred by this abrupt end
Strains to bid soft adieu.
To Mac. wise teacher, gentle friend