A Latin legacy to live by
Updated On: 19 November, 2023 07:26 AM IST | Mumbai | Meher Marfatia
Imprinted on the walls of public buildings and private residences, as well as Mumbaikars’ minds, Latin phrases across town continue to have an edifying, sonorous impact
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A family portrait of Dr Gopalrao Deshmukh (seated centre), whose guiding philosophy is enshrined in the GS Medical College motto, “Non sibi, sed omnibus (Not for self, for all)”
It`s only all bang bang now!” That was the late Fr Peter Ribes, the last of Mumbai’s distinguished Latin tutors, ruing the loss of what he considers the three most beautiful languages gifted to man. “Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have few takers today,” he once said, giving me a copy of 32 Brain Shorts: Stories to Set You Thinking, the fifth book he authored bravely amid rapid macular degeneration. “I call the modern Babel I hear around us ‘bang bang’ languages. They are simply soulless,” he reiterated—unlike the sonorous Latin this Spanish priest taught to generations of students in schools like St Stanislaus and St Mary’s from 1950 to the 1980s.
That absolute, acknowledged authority on classically nuanced Latin knew not a syllable of English when he first stepped on Bombay soil 80 years ago as a young clergyman. Recounting with a smile how he happened to be “fortuitously sent to India”, Fr Ribes revealed he was raised in a Barcelona family of lawyers, doctors and engineers. He struck out differently, deciding to quietly step out into the world as a missionary. Serving communities in the neighbourhoods he was assigned to, Ribes would tell local municipal officials in chaste Marathi, “Mee tumchyapeksha jaasta Indian aahe (I’m more Indian than you).” They invariably agreed it was true.
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