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One of the momentous events in the annual calendar of our high school at Muthukur in the early 1950s was the DEO Inspection.
This DEO stands for the District Educational Officer. Remember that other than the few Christian Convent Schools there were no private schools in that era...all schools were funded by the Government after the village folks came up with half the donation for the start-up. And then the school would be named after the major donor. After a lapse of 50 years I revisited my school and was pleased to note that it is still called 'Shrimati Iduru Iswaramma Zilla Parishad High School'.
This DEO was the supremo of all the schools in his district as far as academics went. If he was displeased with it, the school would shut shop.
To become a DEO you need to have rich experience as a Head Master, coupled with the right father-in-law. My own Father had about 30 years experience as HM but lacked the right connections...he never regretted it though.
Whenever Father went to our District Headquarters town of Nellore, he would drop me at my cousin's place where I would spend the day playing Monopoly while he went to his DEO's Office in Mulapet.
As I said, the DEO is a ripened HM, just like we have this saying in Telugu:
"Thonda mudirina usaravilli"
which means roughly:
"A garden lizard, if it ripens, turns into a chameleon"
I am sure you must have seen dozens of garden lizards in your village...but you need a jungle or a zoo to get to see a chameleon. We had a few of them visiting us at Muthukur, on visits from their jungles nearby. They are simply fascinating. They change colors faster than our politicos, and zoologists call this trick:
"Accommodation"
But I guess there is a lot of optics in it. No chameleon can possibly have all those rainbow colors as pigments under their scales...they must be interference colors...I didn't Google though, so it is just a hunch.
Anyway the DEO is a mighty officer for schools and he visits every school in his domain once in a year for just a day for "Inspection". He had a jeep with a driver and an Assistant with him. He really didn't need this assistant who didn't know typing nor shorthand. He is just a symbol of his boss's status. Like we have another saying in Telugu:
"Raacha peenugu vontariga velladu"
which translates to:
"The royal corpse never goes alone for its cremation"
which means that, when the King dies, a stooge of his would also be killed (for money) and both would be cremated, for company's sake. I guess Pharaohs would nod in gleeful approval.
So a day would arrive when the school goes agog with announcements and pronouncements:
"DEO is coming! DEO is coming!"
much like the movie:
"Russians are Coming!"
By the way there is nowadays a misconception about this movie...I read the other day a rather popular journo referring to it as a battle movie...it is nothing of the sort...it is a hilarious comedy of the Cold War Era.
When the HM announced the advent of the DEO in the Assembly it became official. Then on for a couple of days teaching would take a backseat and students and teachers would all get busy cleaning up and decorating their class rooms. Money would be released from the Contingency Fund and whitewashing, brooming, and coloring the walls would go on furiously. Thin color papers would be bought from Chinna Bazaar at Nellore and scissors and maida would be issued to each Class Teacher by rotation. You may wonder why maida; glue was costly and, when boiled, maida would act as super-glue for papers on walls.
There were a few artists and craftsmen in every class. The craftsmen would cut the color papers into rings and flowers and leaves and, with the help of their underlings, buntings would come up wall to wall and floor to ceiling. And then artists would take over and paint the walls with wetted color chalks. The main motif would be Goddess Saraswati with her veena and her peacock and her swan. There would also be an occasional Ganeshjee.
Our Muthukur students would also have painted their ceilings like Michelangelo did Sistine Chapel. Only, we didn't have a pucca ceiling...it was a thatched affair.
And the walls would also bear Sanskrit epigrams in lovely calligraphy. I still recall this one on my class room wall:
"Niraashrayaa Nashobhante pundita vanita lata"
which translates to:
"Shorn of support shine not pundits, ladies, and creepers"
It is fine with pundits and creepers, but I doubt about ladies nowadays...they are liberated from their heavy support systems and chains.
There would be a tremendous rush to meet the deadline...students, when you give them a job, tend to overdo it...at least they used to, in my days in school.
The D-Day would finally arrive and all of us would sit quietly in our class rooms and our teachers would pretend to get busy with their teaching. Now that I was a teacher myself for all those decades at KGP, I recognize the butterflies in their stomachs.
For, after the DEO and his Assistant grilled the HM over Funds and Attendance and Acquittance and Furniture and Contingency Registers, they would elect to visit one or two class rooms on the spur of the moment, accompanied by the HM, who, like Feynman's father, would try to guide them to his favorite class rooms and excellent teachers. But the DEO was himself a HM once and so he knows. There is this proverb in Telugu:
"Donganu dongey pattagaladu"
which translates to:
"A thief alone can catch another thief"
So the DEO would decline to be misguided and would elect to visit the class of a teacher of whom he had heard a lot from his spies. And the poor teacher would tremble at the arrival of the eminence. And would stop in his tracks while the DEO would usurp his chair (the only one in the room) and order:
"Proceed!"
And the teacher would fumble and get everything he knew well and prepared well utterly wrong, like he would start nicely with:
"Nehrujee built the Hirakud dam"
And he would be stopped. And the DEO would ask the backbencher student:
"On which river does the Hirakud dam stand?"
And the student would get up and stand and stare as if it was not his fault. And the question would be passed on to one and all till the whole class is standing up and tittering. And the DEO would then look at the teacher who would try clumsily to avoid the trap. It was then the turn of the HM to come to the assistance of his underling:
"Sir, maybe this question is out of syllabus at this level"
And the DEO would be mighty pleased as if he conquered the whole world like Alexander the Great and get up and proceed to his next victim.
By lunch break this tamasha would be over and the HM would feed the DEO and his driver and his Assistant strictly vegetarian food bought and brought in carriers from the Aiyyar Canteen. The DEO would be happy but his Assistant would look at his plate as if it had worms in its rice and ask:
"Is there no Military Hotel here?"
...Military Hotel was short for Non-veg Hotel.
By evening the visit would come to an end and there would be Assembly again, this time addressed by the DEO himself. He would turn out to be a very poor but unending speaker and there would be giggles from the rowdy students whose names would be noted down by their class teachers.
After the national anthem was sung we would go and play games and forget all about it.
The buntings would be torn down and the paintings and the slogans on the walls would duly fade...but not my memories of the fun event.
***********************************************************************************************************
One of the momentous events in the annual calendar of our high school at Muthukur in the early 1950s was the DEO Inspection.
This DEO stands for the District Educational Officer. Remember that other than the few Christian Convent Schools there were no private schools in that era...all schools were funded by the Government after the village folks came up with half the donation for the start-up. And then the school would be named after the major donor. After a lapse of 50 years I revisited my school and was pleased to note that it is still called 'Shrimati Iduru Iswaramma Zilla Parishad High School'.
This DEO was the supremo of all the schools in his district as far as academics went. If he was displeased with it, the school would shut shop.
To become a DEO you need to have rich experience as a Head Master, coupled with the right father-in-law. My own Father had about 30 years experience as HM but lacked the right connections...he never regretted it though.
Whenever Father went to our District Headquarters town of Nellore, he would drop me at my cousin's place where I would spend the day playing Monopoly while he went to his DEO's Office in Mulapet.
As I said, the DEO is a ripened HM, just like we have this saying in Telugu:
"Thonda mudirina usaravilli"
which means roughly:
"A garden lizard, if it ripens, turns into a chameleon"
I am sure you must have seen dozens of garden lizards in your village...but you need a jungle or a zoo to get to see a chameleon. We had a few of them visiting us at Muthukur, on visits from their jungles nearby. They are simply fascinating. They change colors faster than our politicos, and zoologists call this trick:
"Accommodation"
But I guess there is a lot of optics in it. No chameleon can possibly have all those rainbow colors as pigments under their scales...they must be interference colors...I didn't Google though, so it is just a hunch.
Anyway the DEO is a mighty officer for schools and he visits every school in his domain once in a year for just a day for "Inspection". He had a jeep with a driver and an Assistant with him. He really didn't need this assistant who didn't know typing nor shorthand. He is just a symbol of his boss's status. Like we have another saying in Telugu:
"Raacha peenugu vontariga velladu"
which translates to:
"The royal corpse never goes alone for its cremation"
which means that, when the King dies, a stooge of his would also be killed (for money) and both would be cremated, for company's sake. I guess Pharaohs would nod in gleeful approval.
So a day would arrive when the school goes agog with announcements and pronouncements:
"DEO is coming! DEO is coming!"
much like the movie:
"Russians are Coming!"
By the way there is nowadays a misconception about this movie...I read the other day a rather popular journo referring to it as a battle movie...it is nothing of the sort...it is a hilarious comedy of the Cold War Era.
When the HM announced the advent of the DEO in the Assembly it became official. Then on for a couple of days teaching would take a backseat and students and teachers would all get busy cleaning up and decorating their class rooms. Money would be released from the Contingency Fund and whitewashing, brooming, and coloring the walls would go on furiously. Thin color papers would be bought from Chinna Bazaar at Nellore and scissors and maida would be issued to each Class Teacher by rotation. You may wonder why maida; glue was costly and, when boiled, maida would act as super-glue for papers on walls.
There were a few artists and craftsmen in every class. The craftsmen would cut the color papers into rings and flowers and leaves and, with the help of their underlings, buntings would come up wall to wall and floor to ceiling. And then artists would take over and paint the walls with wetted color chalks. The main motif would be Goddess Saraswati with her veena and her peacock and her swan. There would also be an occasional Ganeshjee.
Our Muthukur students would also have painted their ceilings like Michelangelo did Sistine Chapel. Only, we didn't have a pucca ceiling...it was a thatched affair.
And the walls would also bear Sanskrit epigrams in lovely calligraphy. I still recall this one on my class room wall:
"Niraashrayaa Nashobhante pundita vanita lata"
which translates to:
"Shorn of support shine not pundits, ladies, and creepers"
It is fine with pundits and creepers, but I doubt about ladies nowadays...they are liberated from their heavy support systems and chains.
There would be a tremendous rush to meet the deadline...students, when you give them a job, tend to overdo it...at least they used to, in my days in school.
The D-Day would finally arrive and all of us would sit quietly in our class rooms and our teachers would pretend to get busy with their teaching. Now that I was a teacher myself for all those decades at KGP, I recognize the butterflies in their stomachs.
For, after the DEO and his Assistant grilled the HM over Funds and Attendance and Acquittance and Furniture and Contingency Registers, they would elect to visit one or two class rooms on the spur of the moment, accompanied by the HM, who, like Feynman's father, would try to guide them to his favorite class rooms and excellent teachers. But the DEO was himself a HM once and so he knows. There is this proverb in Telugu:
"Donganu dongey pattagaladu"
which translates to:
"A thief alone can catch another thief"
So the DEO would decline to be misguided and would elect to visit the class of a teacher of whom he had heard a lot from his spies. And the poor teacher would tremble at the arrival of the eminence. And would stop in his tracks while the DEO would usurp his chair (the only one in the room) and order:
"Proceed!"
And the teacher would fumble and get everything he knew well and prepared well utterly wrong, like he would start nicely with:
"Nehrujee built the Hirakud dam"
And he would be stopped. And the DEO would ask the backbencher student:
"On which river does the Hirakud dam stand?"
And the student would get up and stand and stare as if it was not his fault. And the question would be passed on to one and all till the whole class is standing up and tittering. And the DEO would then look at the teacher who would try clumsily to avoid the trap. It was then the turn of the HM to come to the assistance of his underling:
"Sir, maybe this question is out of syllabus at this level"
And the DEO would be mighty pleased as if he conquered the whole world like Alexander the Great and get up and proceed to his next victim.
By lunch break this tamasha would be over and the HM would feed the DEO and his driver and his Assistant strictly vegetarian food bought and brought in carriers from the Aiyyar Canteen. The DEO would be happy but his Assistant would look at his plate as if it had worms in its rice and ask:
"Is there no Military Hotel here?"
...Military Hotel was short for Non-veg Hotel.
By evening the visit would come to an end and there would be Assembly again, this time addressed by the DEO himself. He would turn out to be a very poor but unending speaker and there would be giggles from the rowdy students whose names would be noted down by their class teachers.
After the national anthem was sung we would go and play games and forget all about it.
The buntings would be torn down and the paintings and the slogans on the walls would duly fade...but not my memories of the fun event.
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