Turning a blind eye

It will be the best option in at least some situations

I have never thought much of English idioms such as, for instance, “leaving no stone unturned”, “hoist with one’s own petard”, and “kick the bucket”, but have always been charmed by others such as “turning a blind eye”.

There is a lot to be said about the art of “turning a blind eye” to violations of rules and regulations in tricky situations in real life where nearly everything is known to be “context-sensitive”, and not always black and white.

This has been driven home to me from as early in life as at age 15. It was the mid-1940s and I was in my fifth form at school then. I had a cousin, a couple of years older than me and living next door, who was appearing for his SSLC (Secondary School Leaving Certificate) public exam that year. Our high school was three miles from our village. We used to walk to the school and back together.

No one in his household had a wrist watch. The old grandfather clock on the wall was not reliable.

On the first day of the week-long exams, the boy, because of some mix-up, was late by two minutes beyond the permissible grace period for reaching the exam centre, our high school. The external invigilator, who had come from another high school 30 miles from ours, and was known for his strictness, looked first at his wristwatch and then at the wall clock in the hall, and denied the boy entry. My cousin missed the grace time by two minutes. His pleas to allow him into the exam hall fell on deaf ears.

The news spread like wildfire, and that evening the invigilator was booed by irate students all the way from the school to his residence. The invigilator turned a deaf ear to it. In fact, he was smiling all the time.

The boy did appear for the rest of the exams and passed all, but lost a year because of his having missed that one paper.

There, of course, is this legitimate question in all such cases: where do you draw the line about making exceptions to rules on humanitarian or other grounds? Or, should it be left to the discretion of the invigilator to allow or deny entry to a latecomer?

Here the English language gives us some precious leeway: “turn a blind eye” to something you don’t want to see, or pretend you haven’t seen!

If only the invigilator had turned a blind eye to the wall clock/wristwatch, all would have been hunky-dory. The boy would not have lost a precious year. But then the invigilator would have been liable to the charge of breaking the rules. And that would be the last thing this particular invigilator, known for his strictness, would ever care for. Instead, he got another feather in his strictness cap.

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Published - November 24, 2024 04:40 am IST