P E R C E P T I O N

Then I went to Islamiah High School after fifth grade in Madras e Azam. First when I entered the school, the elevation and sturdiness of the building intimidated me to a great extent. The taller asoka tree in the front on the both side of steps to the great platform stood like guards. 

In Madrasa e Azam the class rooms were relatively smaller and I used to sit in the front bench….and could see the writings on the blackboard but with some difficulty. Here in the Islamiah, I was made to sit in the second or third row and experienced more stress on my eyes to see the writing…. Somehow I managed with

 concentrating more on the teachers’ voice. But the May-Flowers on the playground continued to look like a blob and the asoka like a big green ice cream bar …..The eleven year old mind could not deduct any failure, because everything near to me seemed alright and in its true form.

I am writing.....this because one of my friend failed to notice myopia earlier in his child and the kid never talked about his incapacity. Just know the plight of suffered kids!

One day when we were coming back from the fajr namaz, I spotted three crescents intermingled and blurred on the sky. Baffled I cried to my elder brother; look there were three moons! He looked down suspiciously and retorted: Are you still sleeping.. I looked away sheepishly with my shrunken eyes not knowing what to answer …... Whenever asked to copy from the blackboard, I would shudder as I could see only thick horizontal lines there. I started to get more and more red circles with frightening notifications from the perplexed teachers in my notes after correction. When I was in the street, I could not able to spot Siraj or Aslam from a distance and would not answer their friendly gestures. They would walk all over me and shout a lot of unprintable. Like that my blurred childhood went on. Nobody including me understood that I could not see properly and I was shortsighted.

Somehow my elder Farooq Bhai, studying Physics at that time in New College, started to realize that something wrong with my eyes and one fine day he took me to Dr. Abraham at Madras and had my eyes tested. The result was myopia and it was a whopping minus five. After a week I happily got my glasses along with prescriptions and caution to adjust with the initial distortion. That week of eternal wait still seemed to have the longest days.

It was subhanallah, a new world around me now. Everything was crisp, bright and colorful. I could see the lot of shimmering leaves with their beautiful edges. I could see every single word, comma, dot and everything on the black board. I could see the beautiful splash when rain hit the ground. I could see the clouds in their own ever changing pattern clearly. I did not have to pretend anymore to have seen the invisible. The glasses became very dear to me, though they were thick and heavy, fitted in a shell frame and covered my half of my face. I would not remove them even for a minute. They became a part of my body and personality. To get me mad, all you had to do was, snatch away the glasses. In the morning, the very first thing I would do was to look around for my glasses with my half-open eyes and put on religiously.

This practice is still there in my life.

PS : earlier detect of myopia becomes very easy now. Just watch your kids when they are before television and you will know.........

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TK Rafeeq Ahmed, Vaniyambadi