For your eyes only

I was with my wife at the eye clinic for her check-up as the after-effects of the Covid attack she suffered wouldn’t go away. “Why don’t you also get your eyes checked since you’re here too?” she prodded.

“Nothing is wrong with my eyes; damn the pandemic, I’ve been indoors for the better part of the year,” I mumbled as I gave in grudgingly.

In the cosmopolitan city of Gurgaon, the new-age hospitals and clinics function in a corporate style. One of the assistants ushered me to a corner, made me sit on a stool and put me through the paces of reading the letters of the alphabet on the wall.

I was stumped as with the left eye, all letters looked hazy and blurred. Before I could recover, another one had taken me to a cabin, put a few drops in the eyes for dilation (to be repeated again after 10 minutes) while asking me to keep them closed till then.

The wind was out of my sails. All sorts of depressing thoughts crossed my mind. Oh! How the wife of a relative was detected and diagnosed with a tumour in the brain pressuring the optic nerve when she was losing sight in one eye. Or could it be a case of cataract? After all, I was getting old.

The first time I heard of cataract was when back in the 1970s, as the SSP Bhiwani, I had escorted a VIP who had come to inaugurate an eye camp at a local charity hospital. Hundreds of elderly rural men and women were quietly sitting in rows. In another queue, a large number of them had covered one eye with a green cloth or wore big-framed, thick glasses. The VIP was profusely welcomed by the management and doctors. They boasted of planning the biggest-ever number of eye operations at the one-day camp. “Why so many tents in the open ground,” I asked. “These are makeshift operation theatres for the day.” “Operations in tents,” I couldn’t help blurting out.

“The doctors ought to know better, SSP sahib,” the VIP was quick to quieten me down. The procedures looked crude and rough.

The train of thought was broken suddenly when the doctor called out for me. Staid-faced, he put me through a drill, while looking into the eye through a sophisticated machine. “It’s cataract in the left eye,” he concluded.

“Surely, nothing more than that,” I asked anxiously. “No, it’s cataract and the front desk team will answer all your queries,” he said and pressed the buzzer for the next patient.

Consequently, I made several inquiries and got operated upon by an eye surgeon in Rohtak. A painless quick surgery and I could clearly see again. No green cloth and no big fat glasses! Incredible advancements of science! My most humble obeisance to the scientists and doctors!