Windows & mirrors to our souls

“After 50, my good friend Peter Hasan, once told me, you should count your blessings.” I find that, as one is closing in on 80, that advice has that much more value now. Rather than “pine for what is not….”, as Shelley said, one should learn to be grateful for what one is left with., Physically, intellectually, emotionally, and, of course, financially. And learn to preserve and protect what one has.

Life, in itself, is a gift from God. And every organ of the human body is a miracle of creation. Take, for instance, the human eye, a sensory organ that facilitates perception of visible information, detecting light and converting it into electro-chemical impulses. It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine having to live without the faculty of sight.

Which is only people remember, with admiration, the great sacrifice of Gandhari, the wife of the blind Kaurava King in the epic Mahabharat, to choose voluntarily to blindfold herself in order to express her dedication and love for her blind husband. Likewise, it is rare to come across any person such as the legendary Helen Keller, who overcame the handicap of losing vision early in her a childhood, and rose to become the first deaf and blind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Clearly she achieved that, not in spite of but because of the handicap of blindness. Similarly, John Milton, often regarded as the greatest poet of his time, did not compose his most famous work, ‘Paradise Lost’ until after he had become blind in both eyes, a tribute to his tenacity, faith in God and determination to contribute to the art of poetry.

Again, it is largely on account of becoming blind, as a result of an accident in childhood, that Louis Braille, at the tender age of fifteen, developed the Braille code, a system of raised dots, that can be read with fingers by people who are blind or have defective vision. One experience which I shall remember forever is listening to the partially blind legendary Telugu maestro Dwaram Venkat Swamy Naidu play the violin as a teenager. He, quite literally, made the celebrated string instrument an extension of his deft fingers as he produced the most lilting melodies.

Communication between people can take place through various means, such as vision, speech, touch, or the written word. But, without doubt, it is the eye that communicates the feelings of a person most effectively. Affection, apprehension, anger, fear, or desire, there is no emotion that the eye cannot display better than any other organ.

To make eyes at someone, for example, suggests sensual feelings about the person being looked at. Another expression, which the eyes can register with telling effect, is disbelief, our exasperation by rolling them. Little wonder then that the eye is called the mirror of the heart. The eye is also an important instrument of conditioning one’s approach to a particular task, or situation. I remember how, in an interview I faced for a job in the Chartered Bank at Bombay. I was asked whether I had come with my eyes wide open. I was already an officer in the State Bank of India, and the interviewer was wanting to reassure himself that I was prepared to work in places like Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, leaving my cushy job.

Likewise, those who have a narrow point of view, and are unwilling to take into account the opinions of others, on a particular issue, are said to be wearing blinkers.

Strangely enough, while many people are unable to enjoy the pleasures of vision on account of physical defects, there are any number of others who, though their sight is perfect, deny themselves the experience of comprehending the purport of what is before their eyes. They look at things with unseeing eyes, and, though able to see, notice nothing. Unfortunate persons, worse than the blind!!!

While, in the strictly physical psychological sense, the eye is an organ which is similarly constructed for all human beings, each person’s eye has its own selective preferences. There are those, for example, who have an eye for detail, noticing things which others cannot. Then there are those whose eyes have a weakness for the aesthetics such as a painting, or a work of sculpture.

The response, which the act of looking at something or someone evokes, can be quite subjective. Which is why it is said that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Likewise, to be shortsighted or, for that matter, to be farsighted, taken in the literal sense, refers to a defect in the eye. In the figurative sense, however, it can mean either that a person is unable to visualise the consequences of his actions, in the distant future, or on the contrary capable of doing so.

A signal tribute to the eye, as the principal organ of a human being, is the description of the dawn of realisation, usually enlightening, if not startling, about an issue as an eye-opener.

Someone, who is a particularly beloved person, or a special favourite, is often called the apple of one’s eye. The expression has its genesis in the ancient idea referred to in the Holy Bible that the pupil of the eye is apple shaped, and that eyes are particularly precious. Any person, or a thing, very noticeable or attractive, is often described as being an eyeful, or a sight for sore eyes, sometimes also called easy on the eyes. Something is said to happen in the blink of an eye when it happens in a remarkably short period of time.

Eye is a versatile word that can lend itself to very connotations in different contexts. The eye of a storm, for example, refers to the calm region at the centre of a hurricane. Not being able to see eye to eye is indicative of an inability to agree about a given issue. A jaundiced eye is indicative of a prejudice or an illogical inability to look at things objectively. Likewise, to eye something is to look at it carefully, either because you want it or avoid it. To see off someone is to go to an airport, railway station or bus stand to say goodbye to someone who is leaving for another place.

‘Come see, come saw’ means neither good nor bad. So so, in other words. An eye witness is a person who was present at an event and can therefore describe it. To see to something is to deal with a person or a task that needs to be dealt with or is waiting to be dealt with. Seeing and understanding have become synonymous with each other. So much so that the expression ‘I see’ has come to mean that one understands what is being spoken about. If you agree to buy something sight unseen, you agree to buy it even though you have not seen it, and do not know what condition it is in. A very telling phrase is ‘groping blindly,’ which, in the figurative sense, means looking for a solution or an answer in an uncertain manner. An ophthalmologist was quite used to dealing with patients with various degrees of defective vision. But he had to gape with open mouth astonishment at a patient, who, when asked to read the letters on the chart in front of him, asked “which chart?!”

(The writer was formerly Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh)