In the acknowledgement my closest companion...
It all started on a hot summer day at school in 1988. I still remember a very elegant Papori (Baruah) Madam, our Social Studies teacher, writing a question on the black-board and she pointed me out from among the melee of chattering children of the third standard, and confidently asked me, “Mayuri, please tell the answer to the others”. And to her utter surprise and disappointment, I was silent like a paralysed goat! Somebody else (a back-bencher!) answered, that too correctly, and I found myself wondering what went wrong with me. I dragged myself home (a bore student that I was wondering how could I have kept mum in Ma’m’s class!) and told my father that I was unable to see what was written on the blackboard.
And that day, a journey started, a myopic’s journey. My first rendezvous with an ophthalmologist started that very evening when my father took me to Dr. Atiqul Hussain Sir’s chamber near Dighalipukhuri. I was excited at the prospect of being bespectacled (imagining that I would look like someone very important!): but Destiny had an even bigger surprise for me. I was given a pair of spectacles, but my left eye was covered with a bandage and the left lens of the spectacles was totally opaque white! I had amblyopia, or “lazy eye”, and it was the only way to rectify it. Can you imagine a lanky nine year old with a half opaque pair of spectacles? Well, that episode made me wary about ophthalmologists (excluding Dr. Shantanu Borthakur, who was a post graduate student in the GMCH when I was going through this phase, and he is the best eye-doctor and a gem of a man ).
Tell you what? I have always hated my spectacles. I was told by everyone that I had presentable eyes. But the omnipresent spectacles made it sure that my eyes were never left alone. So, in those days when contact lenses were a luxury, I usually went out without my glasses. And this caused a lot of confusion in my life. A good number of my acquaintances labelled me a “snob”; I passed by many of them without a second glance, not because I sufferred from superiority complex, but because I simply could not recognize them without my spectacles! Anyways, the most common place where my glasses rested was not on the bridge of my nose but inside my skirt or trouser pockets.
The first thing that I asked my mother to give me when I entered medical college was a pair of contact lenses. My heart beats were audible to all present in the hall where our ophthalmological test was conducted during our medical fitness test during the admission process. I was very apprehensive about reading all the lines of the Snellan chart; then I hit upon an idea. Standing near the illuminated box, I memorized all the lines, and though I could read only the first six lines during the test, I read out all the eleven lines and the optometrist was impressed. When I thought about it later, my heart skipped a bit because I was made to read the chart on the mirror, and I had memorized the lines the other way round earlier! This shows how seriously the person was conducting the test.
My short-sightedness has landed me in soup many a times. A couple of months after landing in Delhi about a decade back, I had gone with my husband to Connaught Place. That day, I had lost one of my contact lenses while washing away the newly-learnt-to-apply eyeliner off my eyes, and I had gone out sans my glasses as usual. My husband went to another shop and was gone for quite a long time. After some long minutes, I saw him coming out with a beautiful girl whom I had never seen before. And he was ignoring me! How dare he ! I was waving to him, but he looked through me like the DTC bus driver looking through the windscreen. I called out his name, but he looked the other way. I was very very angry. I rushed towards him with the intention of giving him a piece of my mind, and lo! The man standing there was a complete stranger! The colour of his t-shirt was same as the one that my husband had worn, and they were of similar built, but he was an alien. I stood glued to the spot and was rescued when my husband tapped on my shoulder.
I always type in ‘Times New Roman’ font size 16 on the laptop, and take some precious time before replying to chat messages as I need to be doubly sure what is being written in the chat-box. The contact lenses ensure that I cannot wash the eyes with water like you all do if something gets into my eyes.
And now I have decided that I cannot ignore my most faithful friend anymore – my spectacles. I will not be ashamed of them from now on, and I promise to visit the dreaded ophthalmologist for a much-delayed check up of the retina in a day or two (meant for people like me who are ’highly myopic’, another appellation that I just hate). You may be wondering why this change of heart in the middle of my life? Well, you see, I again lost the contact lens of my right eye today (went down the sink while I was washing my face with the brand new fash wash) and it’s again my old pair of glasses on which I am relying now to see the world…
And that day, a journey started, a myopic’s journey. My first rendezvous with an ophthalmologist started that very evening when my father took me to Dr. Atiqul Hussain Sir’s chamber near Dighalipukhuri. I was excited at the prospect of being bespectacled (imagining that I would look like someone very important!): but Destiny had an even bigger surprise for me. I was given a pair of spectacles, but my left eye was covered with a bandage and the left lens of the spectacles was totally opaque white! I had amblyopia, or “lazy eye”, and it was the only way to rectify it. Can you imagine a lanky nine year old with a half opaque pair of spectacles? Well, that episode made me wary about ophthalmologists (excluding Dr. Shantanu Borthakur, who was a post graduate student in the GMCH when I was going through this phase, and he is the best eye-doctor and a gem of a man ).
Tell you what? I have always hated my spectacles. I was told by everyone that I had presentable eyes. But the omnipresent spectacles made it sure that my eyes were never left alone. So, in those days when contact lenses were a luxury, I usually went out without my glasses. And this caused a lot of confusion in my life. A good number of my acquaintances labelled me a “snob”; I passed by many of them without a second glance, not because I sufferred from superiority complex, but because I simply could not recognize them without my spectacles! Anyways, the most common place where my glasses rested was not on the bridge of my nose but inside my skirt or trouser pockets.
The first thing that I asked my mother to give me when I entered medical college was a pair of contact lenses. My heart beats were audible to all present in the hall where our ophthalmological test was conducted during our medical fitness test during the admission process. I was very apprehensive about reading all the lines of the Snellan chart; then I hit upon an idea. Standing near the illuminated box, I memorized all the lines, and though I could read only the first six lines during the test, I read out all the eleven lines and the optometrist was impressed. When I thought about it later, my heart skipped a bit because I was made to read the chart on the mirror, and I had memorized the lines the other way round earlier! This shows how seriously the person was conducting the test.
My short-sightedness has landed me in soup many a times. A couple of months after landing in Delhi about a decade back, I had gone with my husband to Connaught Place. That day, I had lost one of my contact lenses while washing away the newly-learnt-to-apply eyeliner off my eyes, and I had gone out sans my glasses as usual. My husband went to another shop and was gone for quite a long time. After some long minutes, I saw him coming out with a beautiful girl whom I had never seen before. And he was ignoring me! How dare he ! I was waving to him, but he looked through me like the DTC bus driver looking through the windscreen. I called out his name, but he looked the other way. I was very very angry. I rushed towards him with the intention of giving him a piece of my mind, and lo! The man standing there was a complete stranger! The colour of his t-shirt was same as the one that my husband had worn, and they were of similar built, but he was an alien. I stood glued to the spot and was rescued when my husband tapped on my shoulder.
I always type in ‘Times New Roman’ font size 16 on the laptop, and take some precious time before replying to chat messages as I need to be doubly sure what is being written in the chat-box. The contact lenses ensure that I cannot wash the eyes with water like you all do if something gets into my eyes.
And now I have decided that I cannot ignore my most faithful friend anymore – my spectacles. I will not be ashamed of them from now on, and I promise to visit the dreaded ophthalmologist for a much-delayed check up of the retina in a day or two (meant for people like me who are ’highly myopic’, another appellation that I just hate). You may be wondering why this change of heart in the middle of my life? Well, you see, I again lost the contact lens of my right eye today (went down the sink while I was washing my face with the brand new fash wash) and it’s again my old pair of glasses on which I am relying now to see the world…
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