There are two types of people in this world. One - People who wear spectacles. Two - People who eventually wear spectacles. I used to belong proudly to Category 2. Of late, my guru acharya was worried about me reading nonsense from the Sanskrit shloka book. And I almost slapped my wife, being unable to gauge the distance at which the mosquito was flying. These episodes gave me subtle hints about something seriously wrong. And then one day, karma arrived in the form of an eye test.
The doctor calmly asked me to read the smallest letters on
the board.
“E… F… P…”
“Tej, that is REFRIGERATOR,” he replied. When his damsel MD
assistant silently giggled at this, I realized this was the beginning of my
downfall. How in my college days, I had laughed at my bespectacled friends. “Bro,
Yesht idu?" (how many fingers am I showing?) I’d ask my friend from 20 feet away
in front of his crush. No doubts – Karma has served me cold!
I recalled how my X friends suggested me to chuck Lenskart
App because of their very apparent Hindu phobic approach and help a local
optometrist instead. So I walked out of the ophthalmologist to an optometrist
next door and felt like that character Akash from the movie Andhadhun.
Inside, the spectacle shopping experience was another spectacularly disappointing
experience. There were some expensive Italian brands with names that sounded
like ice cream flavours: Casetta Sensovino, Tabernaclle Florentine.
After giving a hint to the optometrist that this is my first time buying a
spectacle, he gave me that – “Ohh, Lenskart wale ho kya” look and showed
frames with English names like Executive Titanium, Urban Intellectual, Minimalist
Vision Pro Max Ultra which again I had no idea of!
Buying spectacles is the only time in life when people voluntarily pay money to look smarter than they are. I chose a frame that made me look like a tuition teacher, an underpaid software engineer, and a disappointed father, all at the same time. Then came the painful line from him:
“Wear it all the time.”
ALL THE TIME? Brother, I haven’t even emotionally processed
the diagnosis called “Presbyopia” yet! The brutality the universe was smearing
on me was just too much to handle!
The First Time Wearing Them
The moment I wore spectacles for the first time; I realized many
things. The world is in High Definition! I looked at myself in the Teams video call and
discovered my face was no more rendering in 480p *tears of joy*. Dust exists
everywhere. Trees suddenly had individual leaves, Walls had texture, movie stars
had pores! Of all, that speed breaker enroute to office that I always thought
was a pothole hurt me the most!
The Walking Problem and the cleaning ritual
Nobody warns you about stairs. The first day with
spectacles, every staircase looks like a boss level in a video game. Your brain
goes: “Is this step 2D or 3D?” You walk like a penguin carrying national
secrets until you get used to it. Oh wait, the rain? Absolute betrayal, buddy. The
glasses fog up instantly, and suddenly you’re driving through Silent Hill.
Spectacle wearers don’t clean glasses. They perform ancient rituals, every five minutes: remove glasses, breathe aggressively, wipe with shirt, somehow make it worse, inspect against light like a forensic investigator. And why do fingerprints appear magically? Nobody touches the lens. Yet somehow it looks like someone placed a butter naan on it.
The Social Reactions
Relatives reacted like I had achieved enlightenment.
“Ayyo, specs ah? You look very studious now.”
I murmured “No aunty, I still failed in life. Just that I
can see the failure more clearly”
Some friends said “Bro, you look intelligent.” Amazing how
two pieces of glass can increase society’s confidence in a person. So, if
Einstein had no spectacles, half his theories would’ve been ignored? Brutal world I tell ya!
The Sleeping Disaster
The first week is the worst. You
go to bed straight after shutting down your laptop wearing spectacles and
suddenly lie sideways on the bed, hear a crrrrrrrrrrkk sound and all the
Italian frame names pass in front of your eyes. And your mind experiences the
kind of fear usually reserved for tax raids thinking of having to buy another
pair. After that, removing spectacles before sleeping becomes a sacred
ceremony.
The Ultimate Humiliation
The real humiliation comes when you remove your spectacles to clean them……and cannot find them afterward. So technically, along with remote, keys, mobile, here is another new element added to your list of Kept somewhere and forgot. You spend five minutes searching for the very object required to search properly. This is the optical equivalent of forgetting your password to the password manager.
Acceptance
Eventually, spectacles is no more an accessory. It has become part of my personality. I now adjust them every 30 seconds in conversations—for no reason—just to look like I’m processing complex life equations. I’ll pause mid-sentence, push them up my nose with intense focus, and stare into the distance like I’m solving a murder mystery like Poirot. Sometimes, I nod gravely while adjusting them, as if the other person just said something profound… even if they asked, “Did you eat lunch?”
And my favorite move—removing them dramatically and squinting at absolutely nothing. That’s my “exhausted intellectual” mode.
At this point, if I lose my spectacles, I may not be blind,
but I lose 80% of my personality and 100% of my acting prop!
