Hindustan Times
Through a Glass, Idiotically
Greetings. I am bespectacled.
Perched on my nose as I write this is my very first pair of reading glasses. They have gold (gold-looking, that is) wire rims, are oval-ish but not quite, and make me look like a wise owl or (depending on perspective) the good old ullu.
Actually, I’d go for the second since I am ridiculously proud of them and go about the office and other places where I am known and people appear to like me, grinning like an idiot and announcing, “Look! Specs!” (The people who appear to like me tend to be waiters. So now you know where I like to spend my free time. Bookshop assistants tend not to like me because I am so much better at advising customers on what to buy than they are.)
As someone who’s always read a lot, it had always pained me that while many people I know who hardly read have been bespectacled since they were kids and look like nutty professors, I always had perfect vision and seemed like I wouldn’t know what a book was even if I was repeatedly hit over the head with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by someone intoning ‘this is a book, this is a book, this is a book’.
But having wanted specs my whole life, now that I have them, I’m a little bemused by the fact that I have to get used to them.
They’re reading glasses so I often forget to wear them when I work, which makes them completely pointless.
And they’re very light, so when I do wear them, I forget I have them on and so forget to take them off or perch them on the tip of my nose when I’m not reading. Which, according to my doc, will make my eyes worse.
The worst is what I call The Case of the Phantom Specs. Sometimes I wake up at night, frantically clawing at my nose because I’m convinced the specs are still on my face, I can feel them on my nose and linked around my ears. But they’re not. They’re safely in their box on my bedside table, but I can still feel them on my face. MOST odd.
And definitely ullu-like.
But I like being bespectacled. They make me happy.
So I say to you, as I grin like an idiot, “Look! Specs!”
(Actually, you’ll never see them on this blog because I hate being photographed. This picture here could only be shot after my photojournalist colleague Soumitra Ghosh threatened to actually shoot me, and I refuse to go through that again.
So if you really want to see what I look like when I announce “Look! Specs!”, imagine it.
Imagination is always better than reality anyway.)
(2 votes, average: 2 out of 5)
Loading ...
and reading….
kushal Reply:
June 11th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Grin. Thanks, Parmanu.
[Reply]