Can’t keep those glasses away

I have been wearing glasses for the past five years now. Before I was inducted into this tribe, I was on the other side where people walk around with nothing to balance on their nose bridge. I used to wonder back then what it meant when people said, “I can’t see clearly.” Do people see it as “hazy”? Or “is there plain absence of material”?

When Sid was 7 years old, he declared one day that he couldn’t read what flashed on the TV screen. “What do you mean you can’t see?”, I had asked Sid because I could read the little scroll running across the screen. It didn’t make sense that the kid couldn’t see that.

“Ma”, lil Sid cocked his head, “I know there is something there but I don’t know what it is”, he said. I nodded as my mind grappled with the new reality. I knew I had to take him to a doctor.

The days following Sid’s new accessory made it difficult at first. The accessory would languish on the dining table which meant Sid could never spot me from across the park. The biggest hurdle was his inability to tell time during the morning school rush. I would count to ten in my attempt to lower the rising heat and try hard to breathe easy.

I would then get into search mode to find those magic lenses — a brand new brown one that he later changed to blue. The mist would clear and I would see lil Sid’s glorious mind. There wasn’t a day when the thought — “how can he not see that clock? — did not cross my mind. I would simmer in confusion. I always thought it was lil Sid, trying to justify his complete lack of responsibility — of wearing the spectacles and his nonexistent sense of time.

When it finally dawned that, I was also on the verge of crossing over, I wasn’t convinced. It happened one early morning when I unconsciously enlarged the font size on my phone. “Why is your screen filled with huge letters?’, my husband asked as he watched over my shoulder.

I turned around, narrowing my brows, “they made the whole damn thing so small with their latest update!” I was miffed because he should have seen that in his phone. It was at that moment that a small voice within told me about the possibility of an apparatus of my own.

I dismissed the voice. But, vision has a way of whispering into your ears the inevitable. Words began to merge to a blur, images on the screen lacked finer details, some signboards looked as if they had a trail of shadow behind them. While I had no trouble finding Sid in the park, a dull ache began to creep in the depths of my eyes.

It then happened. I sat with drops in my eyes and the apparatus came home with a lot of fanfare. I treated it as a fashion accessory and avoided it most of the time. Somewhere along, I began to see what Sid had been telling me. I could neither find things nor could I tell time without those lenses with frames. I began to understand and come to terms with reality.

I started to use them for reading — newspapers, messages on my phone and typing away stories on my laptop. I took them off the minute, I finished with my chore and put them in odd places. Unlike my phone, glasses don’t come with a ringer that makes it supremely challenging to find.

Although, my doctor calls mine — progressive glasses — they refuse to show themselves when I need them most. I wish my glasses had bluetooth attached so that I can trace them through an app. But then again, Life looks a lot more clear with them.

Sudha Subramanian is an author and writer based in Dubai. Twitter: @sudhasubraman