A teacher who ignites minds of students by drawings

 Srikakulam: A poor teacher complains, an average teacher explains, a good teacher teaches, and a great teacher inspires, so goes the wise saying. The pa-rameter to assess a teacher’s ability is how he inspires students. Inspiring students and others through pictures and drawings is a unique way as they have a strong impression in their minds.

A vocational course teacher, Bhogapurapu Rambabu is working on a con-tract basis at Bonthalakoduru government high school in Etcherla man-dal. He has acquired drawing and painting skills with dedication and con-centration from his childhood and learned the skill from his elder brother Rama Krishna who is designing pictures on tiles, and marble stones for interior decorations. After acquiring basic skills by assisting his brother Rambabu went deep into the art and touched various forms in it.

Rambabu is a native of the Patha Ponnada village in Etcherla mandal and has drawing and painting skills from his childhood. He acquired ad-vanced skills by making idols of various gods like Lord Ganesha, Saraswa-thi Devi and other idols on different auspicious occasions with clay. He used to source clay from the Nagavali river that passes through his vil-lage.

Gradually he is improving his painting, drawing and artistic skills by painting on paper and walls. He also acquired expert skills in glass paint-ing and drawing various pictures of food chains, climate cycle, im-portance of water bodies and plants. His art and pictures are often dis-played at various exhibitions and fairs at the district level.

Srikakulam district is well known for painters, drawing experts and artists like Vaddadi Papayya, Kurmapu Narasimham, and CSN Patnaik who pro-vided name and fame to the district. Inspired by their paintings Rambabu improved his skills every day by learning new shades and concepts in the art. Particularly students are inspired by the Rambabu’s paintings and drawings on various subjects like the environment, and natural resources and auspicious occasions like Vinayaka Chavithi, Dasara and Deepavali. Rambabu explained the importance of drawing and painting as it improves mental concentration which is essential for students to learn quickly and accurately. “Learning anything with concentration and dedi-cation will stay in the memory forever,” Rambabu suggests to students. He also believed that painting, drawing and art would expose the atti-tude, ability and ideology of students. Rambabu was honoured with noted painter Vaddadi Papayya’s memorial award on 10th September 2021 on the occasion of Papayya’s centenary birth anniversary celebrations.