My Glasses and Me

The things one sometimes does in one’s youth can classify her, or in this case me, as an oddball within the family. Like the time when every I.C.S.E - appearing friend of mine sported dark circles and wasted time getting fitted out for new spectacles. It gave me a mighty big complex, so I swapped my study hours from evening to night, and after plenty of ingenuity, finally arrived at school showing-off my new-fangled half-moon under-eye grooves. This certainly elevated my status from a frivolous madcap to the scholarly echelon. Thank Heavens though, I never joined the spectacled fraternity, as glasses never did look good on my nose.

It was sometime while in college that I developed astigmatism problem and was prescribed corrective cylindrical glasses. I resented the Doc who assured my headaches would go away, I hated looking at the mirror and categorically refused to wear those glasses to parties. Of course, my Mizo friends’ refusal to let me accompany them to Sunday church with those specs on, rankled as well! According to some of my zany mates, the one with those awful glasses was my alter-ego, with completely discordant behavioural patterns.

Thankfully though, the glasses did indeed correct my off-tangent vision, and I discontinued the same, though I still haven’t forgiven that Doc. It was because of him that I spend most of my carefree college years sporting a Wilma-like¹ countenance, when I could have been at least a diminutive version of Daphne.²

As youth gave to twenties and thirties, my petite frame became a deterrent at times. It rankled that I was oft mistaken for a school-going girl, at high-level meetings, press conferences and TV shoots. Not only did I have to make that extra effort to prove them wrong, I recall even resorting to austere tones and a brusque manner. It makes me cringe with embarrassment when I think of it today! It was sometime then, that I had to wear my cylindrical glasses yet again. This time however, I was ecstatic, for the difference it made to my entire persona was remarkable. I no longer had to wear saris to portray that image of efficiency to the first-timer who dealt with me. But alas, in a year or two, the same had to be discarded. My vision was declared perfect, my capricious eyes had ditched me again.

Thus when I kick-started my forties with a ‘near-sighted’ diagnosis, I had mixed reactions. I adopted the half-moon reading glasses, suggested by my spouse, who incidentally hates being seen with bespectacled women. Maybe his friends would then think he married me for my brains, or whatever. I am still in the dark, for he refuses to comment each time I prod. Of course, if you are one of those ‘near-sighted’ ones who use these half-moon glasses, you will know how convenient they can be. At meetings, you have the extra edge, for you are empowered with that perfectly legitimate extra time, fishing out those glasses and perching them on your nose, taking your time to adjust them, while you think fast what to say. Or like when you are presented with bills you do not wish to pay, you can conveniently lose the glasses and refuse to ratify the bill without the use of your own eyes, or in this case, the four-eyes.

The flipside is that, I have to carry these paid-for two eyes, wherever I go, to check out the green marks on food cartons, the expiry dates, the numbers on currency notes and mint marks on coins while making payments, (for my child’s collective interests!), the list is endless. Shopping at Pantaloon and Westside is a no-no without an assistant because of size tags on outfits. But the worst is when I have to put on those ‘half-moons’ in a plushy restaurant so I can spear my peas in the dim light without having them fly up someone else’s nose, AND when I have to put on make-up with glasses on. I still don’t know how the heck a person is supposed to apply eye-shadow with glasses on, and I am one of those persons who JUST CAN’T DO WITHOUT eye make-up. So these days, my ever obliging child is my self-appointed ‘eyes’ (how much will you give me Mom?) to point out ‘upside-down’ bindis (they have such bizarre designs anyway) and do the “Good going Mom, this eye is neatly done…” routines. When I am assailed by such comments with commercial overtones, it makes me wonder sometimes, when God gifted me with problem vision, She could have jolly well have made it hyperopia or ‘long-sightedness’, at least I wouldn’t have to take in such patronising stuff from a teen!

Of course, I never use the term ‘short-sighted’ but ‘near-sighted’, because I am already quite fed-up with people’s inability to differentiate between ‘petite’ and ‘short’, and I have this weakness for the synonymical. My sister who wields the scalpel a minimum ten times on average weekdays, refuses to understand why I don’t get corrective surgery done. I am not THAT crazy to go traipsing all the way to Delhi to change my satisfactory status quo. For the first time in my life this ‘four-eyes syndrome’ has given me unlimited flexibility in image-projection, for I can indeed indulge my whims, donning them at Philatelic and Book-Reading milieus, not to forget PTMs, and leaving them in the safe confines of my purse at social dos and film fests. Did I forget to mention that my cell phone is one of those large-lettered, colourfully displayed myopic-friendly gadgets?

Whose Exam is it, BTW?

I have developed this ritual of getting together with my ‘women friends’ every now and then for a chill out session. Initially the rationale was to let our hair down, forget all our domestic and on-job ordeals, and concentrate on doing something unusual. However, in a couple of months it frizzled down to swapping domestic help horror stories and invariably, the parenting nightmares.

This month though when I set about emailing and messaging the friends about our usual ‘chill-out session’, what I got in answer fazed me. The SMSs slowly filtered in, ‘Sorry, d kids r havin xams…’, ‘r u crazy honey, dis is exam time…’ and ‘we r busy now with exams, c u next mth …’

Oops! Whose exams? The kids’ or the moms’?

It is indeed amazing that lives are becoming so much children-focused and exam-centric. Children are getting stressed in schools, under pressure to perform well in studies and activities. Somehow, this pressure is communicating to us parents. So exam time means time-outs for Moms, when they abstain from social activities and organize their schedule to fit in their roles of child-sitters and study facilitators.

No wonder that more than 70 % of student counseling is just before exams, and the time spent on counseling parents outweighs that on the children!

It was disappointing though, that our ‘girlie meet’ was called off. I was myself looking forward to a break from the state of anarchism reigning in the house. After all, it is September, the time of school mid-term assessments and project submissions, and I do have a school-going child as well!

This; even though, I do not involve myself in the child’s studies, am not a regular diary and copy scrutinizer or habitual test paper dissector. In fact, I make an effort to stock up on my child’s (story book/magazine) reading requirements and ensure a fair share in computer-time. Yet, I still feel the need to go on a Mall-shopping spree or walk into the movie being screened.

It has always been easy to offer advice to other parents, even sometimes scoff at their hyper ways. Maybe this ‘exam thing’ is like smoking. The latter affects the actual smoker, passive smokers and pollutes the environment as well. The manner in which the education system has evolved in India, has turned exams into burdens. These burdens bulldoze the child for optimum performance, stress parents who view this as a report card of their parental feats and even, affect people like me, who try as they might not to, still get bogged down into this examination quagmire.

I think I will take my mother out to lunch, maybe she will give me a tip or two, coz I have a hunch I am headed for a burnout.

Holy Brushes with Unholy Bandhs

I don’t know why I have this unholy kinship with bandhs. Despite the fact that I have never really known the raison d’etre of bandhs, nor have a political affinity till date, I have had these unforgivable episodes with bandhs that have left an indelible mark on my mind. Of course, after a prolonged off-on residence in this bastion of strikes, also called City of Bandhs, I have come to accept this as part of the local milieu, like a home-grown fashion statement.

The first time I had a nose to nose encounter with a bandh was during my impromptu maiden visit to this city. I was barely sixteen, headed to represent Mom at a cousin’s wedding, because she could not make it in the last minute. I landed up at the station in a city closed to bandh. I crossed the river by ferry and walked all the way to my aunt’s. Not even a phone booth existed in those times, so I could not warn my genteel relatives that I had arrived anyway. It would have saved my Aunt from an embarrassing faint and me from repeated jogging reminders about my teenage marathon, on each visit all through these years. The irony is that I do not even recall what the bandh was all about.

The second head-on collision with bandhs was again at " (where else ?). I had landed up bag and baggage for my classes at a prestigious college, when I learned of Indira Gandhi having been shot at, the previous evening, triggering off a mass rampage and a bandh call. I was fortunate that time, to have hitched a safe ride through the streets of carnage with an uncle of the friend of my sister. The nuns at the hostel were too afraid to even take my call, so I ended up taking refuge at the place of my sister’s friend’s uncle’s, where I had to sit through an unforgettable session of marriage interview (of that sister’s friend) as a moral support-giver.

After that, I was left alone for a couple of years. Fortunately, all the bandhs that took place at " occurred only when I was absent from the city.

Years later, I had a serious face-off during a news coverage of a bandh protesting the filming of a international movie ........ losing valuable camera equipment. The memories of that day still haunt me.

My next bandh experience was when my husband was hospitalized. It was sheer chance that the bandh called was a 12 hour or ‘dawn to dusk’ one, and the hospital was somewhat at walking-distance.

Thankfully, there was a long lull, before the bandhs gave way to opposition-sponsored bandhs. These barely held credibility, and mostly proved a political sham. So my life remained unaffected. Besides, I have this elevated status of being housed two floors above whatever takes place out on the streets. So I remain blessedly unaware of skirmishes, bombings, police attacks and gas dispersals.

Of late however, there has been a spate of 24-hr bandhs, sometimes one followed up by another the very next day. So this means, I have to stock up on provisions, pay a visit to my library, keep track of bill dates and stay tuned to the news on TV, resorting to frenzied channel-hopping in order to know the latest and arm myself suitably. The bandh just doesn’t seem to let go of me, it clings like a limpet to my sanity. The flipside however is that, bandhs are days I really get to sleep-in till noon time; there’s no office and school to send-off to, and of course, the maids do not come in.

Life's like that in this land I call Matri Bhoomi...... chock full of carefree and off-the-wall stuff...


Note: This important word in the life of an Indian has made its way to the English dictionary. It has also crept into some other countries, like the U.K.

The Meaning of Bandh