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Losing vision (Jacob Kurien, Sep 30th, 2007) |
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Focus...focus...a little more...why wasn't this looking right? My vision seemed to hesitate for a second. No cause for alarm, its probably just lack of sleep. The next couple of hours would rectify things I hoped.
I had completed my first decade of existence in the world and took immense pride in my health and well-being. Having propped myself on a pedestal of invincibility where naught could touch me, my minutely unfocussed vision was disturbing me. I was accustomed to seeing great distances with little stress to my eyes. An ability that would make a ship’s helmsman swell up with vanity. The skill however was now initializing a slow divorce from me.
The first instance I noticed this was while standing in Thursday’s Assembly. Oddly, Mr. Bhatt's gleaming head displayed a faint stutter. Infact everything on stage fifty feet away had a hint of a faint double very delicately offset from the original object. And yet if I narrowed my eyelids a wee bit, they merged into one. Hmmm....what could this mean? For the moment, I dismissed it as the effects of a particularly hot summer.
A few more days elapsed and my recently discovered impediment was slowly drawing my attention to a point that it was starting to irk. From the penultimate seat in class, the white scribbling of chalk on the green board was beginning to exhibit the same characteristics of Mr. Bhatt’s crania. I tried to shake off the discomfort with a shrug but it wasn't going away. It was as if some invisible leash had me chained to this disability. I resorted to the same solution I stumbled upon in the auditorium - squint some and I could still read perfectly.
This annoyance began to magnify with the passage of days. Pretty soon, I had to squint harder and harder to reap the same benefits from a month ago. The boundaries of articles of everyday encounter were getting incredibly fuzzier. It was like the malady had taken a turn for the worse. I was adrift on a sea of corneal helplessness with no land of reassurance in my limited sight...and it was attracting attention.
Maintaining a distance of at least ten feet between the tube and ourselves was a family rule ingrained into us. Which is why my sister chose to question my action of incrementally inching closer to the television over the last couple of months. Surely, it would be safe to confide in her about my secret anxiety. Seconds later when the entire household had gained knowledge of my handicap, I knew I shouldn't have heeded to that voice of reason.
Suddenly, it was apparent that in the near future, I would be acquiring a change in appearance which was by no means a boost on the fashion scale. The horrifying prospect of wearing vision aids commenced to preoccupy me. Pretty soon, I was pulling out photo albums and adorning my face in those pictures with eye-glasses to get a preview of what was to become of me. It was nauseating and gut-wrenching. A quick test with a make-shift vision reading chart emphasized a situation of no escape.
The optometrist I visited at Salmaniya Hospital was a man without sympathy and brimming with a sultry attitude. His hands worked with cold calculation in switching lenses in and out of the lens holder that made you resemble a Borg out of the not yet created TV series - Star Trek The Next generation. As I read out the alphabets off the chart he would snarl at me to keep my eyes wide open. At one point I was not sure if the lack of clarity was a result of my faulty vision or just the fatigue from having to stretch my eyes wide as saucers. The depressing verdict was scrawled in doctor's lingo onto a card...-1.0D in each eye.
We looked at frames at Yateem optics and I finally picked one that was very reminiscent of the early eighties. The frame itself covered about half of my facial real estate as if to stake its very obvious claim on my countenance. The oriental girl at the shop explained that the choice in lenses was between plastic and glass. Plastic would scratch over time but had the advantage of being more durable in comparison to the latter. So plastic it was. A few days later my dad picked up my finished spectacles and brought them home.
The first impression was not encouraging. The face that stared back at me in the mirror seemed to belong to a stranger...and I must add – a very ugly one. The backdrop of pleading family members desperate to convince me that it made me look several degrees smarter or something to that effect barely registered as distant cacophony to my now shocked and numbed senses. How was I ever going to face anyone after this? My image of a superhuman was effectively ruined and lay in shambles. That was not something I was prepared to make truce with yet. I decided to continue without wearing them. The bumble bee look would be harmful for my self-image and it was safer postponing it for the moment. A phase of munching carrots for breakfast, lunch and dinner came into existence. That proved to be transient and failed to last more than two days owing to my utter disdain of this rabbit diet.
The next year in school unfolded an even thornier picture. My pituitary glands were lazy in secreting growth enzymes. This was a boon in disguise because it promoted me to the front benches in class. I could read the board either by squinting really hard or by peeking into my neighbour's books. Mrs. Omana Phillai immediately caught on to my myopic trauma. This lady had a retina that defied medical science. She could home in on your errors in math problems by merely glancing at your notebook held up from your seat. Little escaped her and she warned me that I should do something about my situation. I didn't feel particularly thrilled about revealing to her that I had already made the humiliating trip to the doctors and that the unattractive remedy was sitting on the drawer chest back home.
Miraculously, I survived the rest of the year with blurry vision and it was just about how far I could take it because it was time for us to leave for India. Saving grace for over a year of self-inflicted hardship.
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