The Uninvited Guest

 I remember, it was just a few month back, when I had to unwillingly welcome this uninvited guest in my life forever. I never wanted it to come to me. Several times things happen which we don’t want to happen and we have to live with it. We have to accept it. There is no other option. This is how things are.

I am talking about the spectacles in front of my eyes. I had minor problem with my eyes. I wanted to get it checked up. Our medical collage doesn’t have the department of ophthalmology. Thus I had to go somewhere else. We are taken to Tilganga eye hospital, the biggest eye hospital of Nepal, to teach ophthalmology. I had planned to go there for checkup. After a good inquiry I knew that I had to go there early morning and it would take almost entire day for checkup because of long queues in all the rooms of hospital. I was afraid. I wanted to get checked up by a senior ophthalmologist but I didn’t have time to wait in different queues and loss a whole day. After enough research, I decided to go to paying clinic of Nepal Eye Hospital, Tripureswor. 

I was checked up there. I thoroughly told my problems. After seeing my eyes from a strange machine, the doctor told that there is some problem in my eyes. I was worried, why didn’t she tell me what the problem was? Do I have a significant worrisome problem and she was giving me a ‘warning shot’? By giving just a small chunk of information, was she trying to break the bad news for me? I asked her, if I have anything to worry, or there was something incurable. She understood my psychology and told me not to worry. I was overthinking, she declared. I smiled.

Snellen's Chart, Source: google

In other room they made me read snellen chart. I read them explaining them where can I read easily, where I could read with labor and was dim to look etc. The doctor checking lens asked what letter is that showing an ‘X’. I read it and said I can’t read the letters beside it which are of the same size. She smiled. She should have felt that I was making her job easier. I know how easy it is to a doctor when the patient is friendly and chatty. I was prescribed with a lens more powerful then expected. I asked the doctor if I was late for checkup. She said that if I was late I had to use more powerful lenses may be spherical lens in place of cylindrical. She very cleverly managed my query using positive words. But I understood that I was not in time. She asked me about my job, I told I was a medical student at PAHS. She said, “Oh, in that case, I need not explain you anything. You know everything needed.” I answered that I didn’t. I know some anatomy of it but she need to tell me everything that a normal patient is told. She explained me thoroughly. She also suggested me to buy an ARC lens since I had to work in computers for long time.

Finally I was sent to room number seventeen, where I was given plenty of frames of spectacles to select for me. I tried more than a dozen of them and watched in mirror. I was looking horrible with almost all of them. My eyes didn’t suit with any crutches for it. I sadly ended up selecting none of them. I came back to Patan and called a friend of mine. We again went to few goggles shop and tried. As earlier, I looked nice on none of them. I had no option, thus I selected one. The one in which I looked less horrible than others. That too was not good, say- a one eyed person in the kingdom of blinds. From next day, I had really trouble some days. Some said I looked like doctor now, other said I looked like studious guy, few of them even said that I was looking like an old man, my room partner started his day every morning by calling me ‘professor saab’ early morning for few days. “Chasmaa wale saroj” (with laughter) was the craziest name given to me. I was very much sad and embarrassed with all the comments. I felt like being having a crutch for myself, not being able to walk by myself, being incomplete within myself. It was uncomfortable as well, causing slight headache and eye pain, even more, with goggles I felt like something like polythene was covering my face. I was feeling like suffocated. I simply hated my spectacles. But I had no option. I don’t want any surgery. Contact lenses are even more troublesome and uneasy.

An interesting thing I remember is, a guy who brought distance with me for some personal dissatisfaction, suddenly called me one evening. The sentence he used was “When did you start wearing spectacles?” I took a pause. Looked towards him to conform that question was for me. After a second or so, I replied, “few days back.” And I left. I wonder if I had not been using glasses, what might be the other sentence he would have chosen in place of it. Was he really in search of one? The psychology is not understandable for now.

Days passed and I managed. In just a month, I am feeling a strange love for my goggles. It was like an arrange marriage of my grand pa and grand ma. Someone unknown, unplanned comes, helps u, be with you, and slowly you fall in love. I am too now in love with my spectacles. It’s always helping and comforting me selflessly and needs nothing in return. Using it no more makes me feel incomplete or unable, I am still independent. They are like my own, like my own organ, like a part of my body. If I forget it, I feel like incomplete. Missing cellphone or wrist watch doesn’t bothers me, but missing goggles does. I have now no problem to continue my journey with a pair of glasses in front of my eyes. Who would like to have love in the beginning and hatred in the last? Off course no one. It’s like “love at last” for us.