Good eye’s donation by Pataudi

Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi ruled over world cricket with one good eye. He is no more but the eye will continue to live, because the legendary cricketer had decided to donate it. His left eye having been retrieved within hours after his death on September 22, 2011 – with the family’s consent – was preserved in Sir Ganga Ram Hospital’s eye bank. Pataudi’s right eye was damaged permanently in a car accident when he was 20 years old. The 70-year-old cricketer (husband of actor Sharmila Tagore and father of actor Saif Ali Khan) was diagnosed with a debilitating lung infection a few months ago

Dr. Narendra Kumar
Editor, Optometry Today

On hardships

Leaving aside the issue of the non-introduction of Government legislation to regulate the practice of optometry even after its introduction in the country way back in the year 1958, let me this time focus on the miseries of the average citizen.

Land-line phone going dead or disturbance creeping in, daily newspaper full of crime stories, market flooding with counterfeit currency notes, blatant encroachment on public land, menace of unauthorized weekly markets, rising inflation, and above all frequent electric load-shedding…all play the nerve-racking game like the childish bickering of our legislators in the parliament, forgetting, and not caring, about the basic issues to provide some relief to the common man in terms of food, clothing and dwelling. Yes, God is surely there; otherwise how could life go on in the face of such hardships?

Dr. Narendra Kumar

Today's India

Just as optometry in India continues to suffer in an atmosphere of non-regulated practice despite its having been introduced more than half-a-century ago in 1950s, the contents of my amateurish poem in Hindi, `Aaj ka Bharat’, written in 1980s, continue to depict a picture of events that still hold good after so many years!

Dr. Narendra Kumar
OptometryToday@gmail.com

Winning over disability!

Visually challenged children form a human pyramid to break a clay pot during the dahi-handi celebration ahead of Janamshtmi in Mumbai on August 20, 2011. Source: Hindistan Times.

And, optometry, despite odds, continues to render useful service to community via various avenues like ophthals’ clinics, own private set-ups, hospitals, MNCs, teaching institutions, and dispensing optical outlets!

Dr. Narendra Kumar
OptometryToday@gmail.com

Optometry's dilemma

Like this beautiful, but submerged, hut on the banks of swollen Ganga in Allahabad, optometry, the first line of defense against blindness, continues to suffer in the non-regulated atmosphere in India, the largest democracy in the world!

Dr. Narendra Kumar

Baring it all to grab eyeballs

While I don’t believe in the daring act of baring it all to grab eyeballs, as resorted to by French footballers facing defending champions Germany at the Women’s World Cup in Berlin recently (Picture shows Gaetine Thiny in Bild as reported by Hindustan Times, July 4, 2011), optometrists in India perhaps need to do something unique to juggle out government authorities from their hibernation to be able to rise to the just demand of introducing legislation to regulate the practice of optometry – primary eye care – in the hands of those qualified!

Dr. Narendra Kumar

Spensthrift or economiser?

My rolling in the left-over shaving cream to one end and cutting the tube in two parts was being observed in disbelief by my 11-year-old grandson; but when I explained that the remaining part of the gel would suffice for leathering my beard for at least 10 days, he was really impressed and said: “Gandhi ji, too, used to utilise for rough work papers printed or typed on one side!” Now, I don’t mind if someone labels me as a `spendthrift’ as I consider myself to be an `economiser’.

Dr. Narendra Kumar