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The next post-surgical commandment would be that I should wear dark safety glasses (full-goggles) throughout my confinement at home for a week, and for a month when I venture outdoors during daytime; and a hard plastic cup that covers the operated eye during my sleep.
That reminded me of the only horse I saw in our childhood village. We didn't have horse-carts then...only bullock-carts. But there was this fine specimen of a horse that belonged to our wealthy Reddy, attached to his 'sort'...a sort of glorified buggy.
During its trips to Nellore the eyes of this horse were covered with leather blinkers and we couldn't see his eyes at all. I asked Father why our horse was blindfolded. He replied that there is a tiny space left for the horse to see only the road in front and nothing else that could distract him. Apparently horses are easily distracted by traffic and tend to kick up a row and bolt...they are endowed with superb peripheral vision.
Also they are troubled by flies that tend to feed on their tears.
We also had a lone groundnut oil mill in our village. It was a huge affair housed in a shed with a vast grinding stone, and a wooden pestle that was attached to the neck of a buffalo that went round and round in a beaten track while the milling went on for hours. This buffalo too was completely blindfolded. Father told me that otherwise its circular perambulations tend to make it giddy.
Also to fool it to think with pride that it was going all the way from Muthukur to Nellore.
Man is truly vile.
The first pair of goggles I saw was at the age of 4 when my uncle, Subbamama, was visiting us in our village. He was in the Indian Air Force and he brought with him many precious gifts for us kids. One was this pair of goggles. The other was a rough ground glass board that we used as a clipboard in our exams for many decades. He said it was a spare window of his aircraft. Another was a fancy toy model of a real airplane. He also carried with him a box-camera that was new to us.
Talking of clipboards I recall a student at IIT KGP who was in the habit of bringing her brown plywood clipboard to her exams. She was caught while copying from her clipboard...she was an expert in calligraphy and I found that she had penned her class notes of the entire semester on her clipboard that was covered by her answer-script...for onlookers. She was young and had no cataract...she could read with her naked eyes her micro-jottings that baffled us...we asked for a magnifier in her DC (Disciplinary Committee) which the Dean supplied us.
She was de-registered duly.
And then there was this fabulous Ray Ban goggles that BSR, my co-research scholar at AU, bought in 1964 spending his entire monthly stipend. Its glasses were coated with silver or mercury or whatever so thoroughly that all that the onlookers could see were reflections of the scenery around. They were regularly advertised in glossy magazines...a family would be picnicking and the gent who wore them would be reclining on grass and the photo showed the Taj Mahal reflected in his Ray Bans.
BSR was also a Table Tennis pro and his racket was Dunlop Barna with rubber coverings that were pimpled to give the ball a nasty spin...top, side, and chop.
The day he bought his Ray Bans I asked him why he spent a fortune buying them. And he replied:
"Tomorrow is our Andhra University Convocation and a thousand boys and girls from all over the state would be descending in their best makeup and I want to ogle to my heart's content"
good old gps at 4
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