I have a unique relationship with my spectacles. We’ve been friends for a decade. An eye specialist came to my school one day to conduct an eye camp where I was told to read alphabets printed on a back-lit translucent box.

Reading the bigger letters was a breeze, but as I progressed to the smaller ones, deciphering the alphabet started getting difficult.  

The doctor then advised me to visit the hospital.

At Bir Hospital, I bought an admittance ticket and took the staircase to the third floor where the eye department was situated. The room was dark, but for an incandescent light bulb that helped make out the tables, stools and check-up machines in the room. There in the room, an ophthalmologist sat on an old wrought-iron chair examining patients in turns. And after waiting for sometime it was my turn to get examined.

It was the weirdest pair of glasses I had ever seen. It was a bulkly metal frame with circular scales and detachable lenses. The doctor would remove the lenses from the spectacles and replace them with ones with different power readings, then ask me to read from the light box. He’d pick a new glass from his collection every time I failed to read the next line. Finally, I was able to read every letter on display. The doctor congratulated me and also informed that I now needed to use glasses with -0.25 power.

I would visit the eye doctor every six months, and with each edition, he’d recommend a higher power reading for my spectacles. He asked me to replace my first pair with a -0.5 glass during the second visit. And then -1.5 in the next visit.

And prior to my fourth visit, because I was skeptic of the doctor’s recommendations, I had made up my mind not to change the glasses irrespective of the diagnosis. This time it was -2. I stuck to my older pair.

But with defiance came the difficulty in seeing things clearly. So, when I finally decided to visit the doctor, after much procrastination, I made sure that I questioned him about my skepticism regarding the constant increase in the power of my glasses.

“I don’t understand how educated people like you believe in myths,” he quipped. “It’s not wearing the right power that stresses your eyes. Lens never increase shortsightedness.”

Then it was another round of testing.

“I should prescribe -2.5 for you. If you’re afraid, then I can go ahead and write -2.25 on your report,” the doctor said.

I requested him to write down the truth.

My decision to forgo the spectacles for a while had already affected the condition of my eyes. Had I put on the correct lenses, following the doctor’s advice, the power of my eyes probably wouldn’t have degraded the way it did.

And through time, along with the condition of my eyes, I have changed too. My spectacles are a part of me now. My eyes and the glasses, they’ve grown to form an inseparable relationship.

Uddin is a student at Shankhar Dev Campus