The Importance of Spectacles – II

There might not be any relation at all between spectacles and intelligence but there certainly is a very curious relation between spectacles and the perception of intelligence. A person with spectacles on his face is approached with a certain, conscious or sub-conscious, presupposition of subtle intelligence.

“Oh a person with thick glasses. Hi. How do you do? What do you study? Oh, engineering? What, Electrical engineering? That’s great. Engineering is a tough racket, but you’re certainly intelligent enough to endure it, I gather. Pleasure to meet you. Would you be so nice to give me tips on improving me intelligence? I have a real bad memory. Oh thanks a lot, very valuable. Very valuable indeed. Thank you so very much for your precious time.”

Turns out that the glasses were an endowment of constant close observation of third-rated movies, and electrical engineering was never advanced beyond the first year. Perception of subtle intelligence.

But the genuine advantage of glasses unveils itself during the “depression era” of the students, that is to say, during the agony of exams. Sitting right next to a guy who’s intelligence in reality extends beyond presupposition would be entirely useless if the spectacles ditch you in the nick of time, following some unfortunate incident.

“Darn it! I should’ve had the new ones made yesterday. Shucks! Alright, the examiner is away, let’s get the smart ass. Hello there, what’s the answer to this MCQ? B? speak a bit clearly man. What? C? Don’t moan! C for Cat? No? What, come on man, a little louder. Don’t be a chicken!” When all a sudden a hand shows up on your shoulder which apparently belongs to the examiner. “what on earth…?!! Oh no no, I wasn’t trying to get any information. I have my question paper down there. Yeah, down there, in his feet…was only trying to recover it. There. Ah yeah, got it, you see. Next time? Oh no never, I’d be careful…. Damn these glasses! son-of-a-bitch almost got me by neck!”

Glasses do strengthen your relationships with people. They get you closer, in a literal sense. That’s because you can’t really see them from far. They keep waving hands at you from distance and you keep scratching your head, or caressing you chin, or picking your nose thinking that no one is observing you, and realize a presence only when you listen a couple of swears, apparently directed towards you.

“Oh me? Why? What the hell? No, I never saw you. Well come now, why would I ignore you. You don’t mean anything to me…oh I mean..you don’t mean any harm to me…yeah, no not the frame… this time it’s the glass…sucker got cracked.”

On The Importance Of Spectacles.

There are these fancy spectacles of all shapes and colors; but I won’t be wasting my time honoring their faithfulness and lauding their utility. I’d like to dedicate my time and attention to the beloved spectacles that have proved to be my faithful companion for the last twenty-one months, through every thick and thin, even though there have been several incidents that attempted to undermine our solemn relationship. This is the longest era of persistence that we’ve abided, ever since the day nature decreed my wearing glasses – that was 6th of March, 2000. I do remember the exact date because that was the day when I was denied an admission in PAF college Sarghoda on the basis of weak eye-sight, after having passed written test, medical examination and as an inner acquaintance of father informed, the interview too. Turned out that the required eye-sight was 6/6, while my shortsightedness had degenerated to 6/36. I never took it much seriously as I myself wasn’t much interested in becoming a part of PAF; the only thing that grieved me was that dad was hurt. Throughout my adult life, I’d done that several times; unintentionally hurting him when actually I tried to afford some felicity. But anyways, ifs and buts are quite a disturbing part of history and it’s dreadful consuming yourself with them.

So the first few months proved to be a two-fold escapade. One one hand, I had to adjust myself with this new peril enshrouding my nose and ears, and on the other, I had to constantly avoid momentary lapses to keep this peril intact. The first venture, I undertook quite efficiently, but the second one proved to fatal, considering my horrendously careless nature. To cite a classic case, once I just yawned myself into the door – now that was quite careless and I couldn’t figure out where the door emerged from all of a sudden – but the end result was that the glasses were gone.

Eventually, the dust of the adventures settled down and I gradually came to terms with the inevitable ordeal. Time passed quite smoothly with the glasses for a while until the advent of the little devil nephews of mine. Among other loots, their favorite plunder are my poor spectacles, and they have this knack of snatching the glasses off my face with the swiftness of light and firmness of a little leopard. At one moment, they are the very epitome of innocence and tranquility while at the very next instant, they can turn out to be the demon despoilers, and the victim, as usual, happen to be my poor glasses. These hostile relations continue to exist between the cute fiends and the glasses to this day, and even though I’m always attempting my profoundest efforts to tilt the balance of survival in the favor of the usual victim, I mostly find myself at my wits end. The little jollies are just naturally too good at their expertise.

Once you get entangled in this web, or shall I say glass, of spectacles, there’s only one way to see the world; through the magnifying lens. The world viewed without them would be something like melted colors on a canvas, with the images fluxed into each other. There’s no black or white, only the floating shades of grayish existence. You take a walk down the street and can’t really recognize a person until he is head-on with you, without slightly realizing your constant staring. The most adventurous, or rather a mis-adventurous episode forms while driving a car. You’re driving a car on a country-side highway on a smooth summer evening when all of a sudden, you realize that another vehicle is also in your lane. This alarms you, but what actually appalls you is the realization that no only that, it’s coming towards you! Being out of your glasses and now quite out of your wits, you straight away pull the car over to the road-side, this time not realizing the tree in your way.

So as it turns out, throughout the years, those little glasses sitting your nose and gripping your ears, are either a great friend you’re blessed with or a grave misery inflicted upon you – anyway you put it, or rather feel it.

(to be continued)

Writing on the Wall

“Anyone who throws trash or pisses here is a cursed son of a bitch!!!”

 

Now that isn’t a threatening dialogue from some Pacino or DeNiro mob flick, it’s the “writing on the local wall”!

 

It was quite recently that I noted that walls are quite an important mode of communication in our society. In fact, they even surpass newspapers in communicating eloquently the view-point of their artistic employers. Take a look around you and you would come to acknowledge these “out of mind” masterpieces of art. The writings on these walls vary from professional advertisements and announcements of congregations to enthusiastic political slogans and even threats. And yes, there are ‘writings on the walls’ that openly declare:

 

“Anyone who dares to write on this wall would be prosecuted”. I wonder if they’re merely trying to afford people some comedy!

 

These writings are not only a vital means of communication, they also depict the artistic taste of the writers. There are writings that would attract you closer to the wall to read it just because it looked good from far.

 

Such writings are one of the favourite enjoyments of the teens. A kind of ‘open-source’ where they, not able or allowed to do it anywhere else, can freely and equally pour out their inner anger and overwhelming passion. They love to paint walls with their ‘local gangs’ and groups’ news, they love to promote their cricket clubs and it’s a great way to invent, with mutual cooperation of their opponents, new and innovative languege of slang and swears!

 

 

Election season is the ‘spring season’ for walls and wall-chalk-ers, or we may appropriately call them wall-artists. Candidates run their election campaign through walls and you can’t really guess the real color of the poor wall amidst the swarm of paints, posters and stickers. Few days before election are like the few days of Eid when you receive gifts from all sorts of candidates in the form of wall-chalking, wall-painting and poster pasting. Finally, the morning of the election day is like the morning of the Christmas day when you rise and, to your utter amazement, which quite soon gives way to chagrin, find the external wall of your house covered with these ‘gifts’ from the ‘Santa Clauses’ of our politics. Keeping in account the immense assistance of walls in the political process, it can be safely stated that without these walls, our politics would’ve failed!

 (To be continued at some later time….)