The “eyes” have (had) it
View(s):
I got a new pair of glasses today. I listened to the Optometrist on how I should care for them, etc. politely. I had not the heart to tell her that I have been wearing glasses for the last 78 years – I don’t think her parents had been born at that time. I was 10 years old: a long, long time ago.
Ours was a spectacle-wearing family. My elder brother and sister were wearing them by the time I started and the last one joined the club many years later. A teacher spotted me squinting in the middle row of the classroom, put me in the front row, found that that was no solution and broke the good news to my parents. They had been suspecting this but had hoped it would go away if they did not look at it. No such luck!
How many pairs of glasses can be squeezed into one man’s salary? So I got a pair of nickel-framed glasses. The ear pieces were liable to bend, but were easily straightened out by a neighbour, with a pair of pliers. Anyway, as the younger son I was already quite used to hand-me-downs and this was another of that kind!
The plus-point of seeing again outweighed all that. Now I could see individual blades of grass without bending down. And the stars were bright (“Lucy in the sky with…”) diamonds in the sky and not amorphous blobs. I could actually see constellations. The flip-side? Glasses were fragile, and expensive. So I could only be a spectator at sports: serious sports. Glasses, in schoolboy-speak, meant that the wearer was studious, scholarly, and clever. A nerd. It was hard to live up to that, but the legend was strong enough to ride along while being nothing more than average.
And so, I survived school.
The eyes first grew weaker, then steadied and finally settled on even keel. No great changes for many, many years. Decades. Then came the hathalis aendiriya, “the darkness at noon”, bi-focals, and intimations of mortality. After the initial shock, I came to terms with it, experimenting with two pairs of glasses, tinted lenses, “executive bi-focals”, “vari-focals” and other such. I even had lenses so dark they looked like sunglasses. Once, after a late night as a hotel-owner’s guest, I had to take the salute at a parade in the hot morning sun, and the dark glasses helped!
A couple of decades later, another crisis.
Cataracts! Both eyes. So, under the surgeon’s knife, twice. Strangely, distance vision improved slightly but there was a bigger problem hiding behind the lens. ‘Macular degeneration’. One eye permanently damaged and the other requiring regular inspection.
The needle goes into the eye. Several times, in cold blood. But no cure. No balanced vision. Eyes easily tired. Reading becomes a chore.
Reading a chore? “Reading (which) maketh a full man…(and writing, an exact man.”)? Reading, which was so hard-won a skill, the first steps towards writing?
Reading-writing, learning-thinking. Moving-becoming….. a full man. A seemingly endless flow.
And then “The Machine Stops”.
Is anarchy loosed upon the world? Not really. It takes more time. The wheels grind more slowly…the signals reaching the CPU become fainter, less distinct, like messages from the Mars Rover…. the senses malfunction, stutter. The outer defences crumble…….… but the citadel stands firm. No sudden, bone-jarring stop. As the momentum generated by the first cry (and after) loses steam, Life freewheels to a gradual stop. “Me” and my senses fade…. Hearing already muted, and now, the Eyes have had it.
Yet life coasts along in neutral gear, re-living memories of a life once lived.
I lean back in my armchair. Sip. Rum-inate. Chew the cud.
( This series is now concluded)