Godaya Breaks his Specs

I'm blind. Well, not the completely blind-blindness, but I'm very very blind. When the optician tells me to read the eye chart with the various letters of the alphabet in it, what I can see without my glasses is one big yellow blob. Even with glasses, things don't improve much. Glasses allow me to see the first row, the big E. Things stop there.

Here I was sitting in front of my computer on a Monday morning, contemplating excuses to give to my editor as to why my columns are going to be late (yet again), and I break my glasses. I was taking them off to wipe my eyes, and snap it went. Now I'm left with the specs neatly broken in two. I have to do lots of work tomorrow, with lots of travel. And I'm looking forward to it.

See, the world is not a very blind-people friendly place. And since Colombo is not very friendly to begin with, this makes Colombo even less blind-people friendly. Add to this how inaccessible our building and public transportation services are, and you're in a bit of a spot.

The routine didn't break. Shaving in the morning was a bit of a problem (Yes, I shave with my glasses on.), but other than that life wasn't very difficult. Coming into the office-which-I-rarely-go-to was a bit of a hassle. Let me explain what I meant by buildings in Sri Lanka not being blind-people friendly.

Take the example of hotels. Architects and designers hack their brains for hours, and then come up with beautiful lighting systems for building which look amazing at night.

In the process, they also make people like me feel like a penguin in the middle of Sahara, not having a clue as to where to go. It's the same with offices. While someone had paid a lot of money to make the office space look very professional, they are not willing to paste yellow sticky tape along the staircase to make sure people like me don't fall. To date I have not been to a single office in Sri Lanka where the steps are clearly marked.

Things are looking up though. I've now found my pair of spare glasses, and given my "proper ones to be fixed. Means I'll be back to doing my somewhat out-of-the-ordinary social experiments in no time. But a note to all those bosses out there: Stick yellow sticky tape to your steps. You don't want me to fall and die in your office, that would mean the end of this column you love so much.

PS: I'm trying to convince a friend of mine (whom I refer to as mirror-me, because she is a mirror image of myself) to set me up for a blind date. And you will definitely get to read about it (Provided my editor consents). Wish me luck people.