Seeing Things

My views on "the new normal" got published in Campaign India. Available to read  here   

Glasses have been a part of my face since I was 7. My mom meticulously wrote the multiplication tables from 1 to 10 on a big chart paper in bold colored sketch pens and pinned it up on the wall to help me memorize them. One time when she was making me read it from a bit of a distance, she discovered her sight was better than mine! That's how I got glasses at the age of 7. At that age, it is natural for anything that a kid owns to be subjected to accidents. My glasses got dropped, sat on and randomly picked up by my baby brother to experiment with - what would happen if he ..say..scraped it on the concrete floor of our back porch? Also, glasses were fragile back then. The lens were made of glass. I remember this because this one time, when I was the same age, while frolicking about, I came too close to the corner of the bed. The lens shattered while I was still wearing them. And I started to bleed on my face. My mother who witnessed this - her heart stopped for a moment because s