I never liked contact lenses. I wore them for a few years at a stretch from 1996 and then had them on and off for a while, but I just went on hating them. Why? Huff… I wore rigid gas permeable lenses which are as uncomfortable as it can get. Also, with my astigmatism, I could never really get them to fit properly. The doctor didn’t mention anything clearly, my parents thought I was being mischievous or lazy when I hated to wear them, relatives tried to convince me to wear them without knowing what’s really going on. They said all good things about contact lenses, yes I understand that, but did they have high astigmatism like me? I guess not! Whatever, then my lenses dried up and I threw them away.

The only time I did miss them was when I dressed up. Heavy glasses (especially the ones I had in my early-mid teens) looked horrible when I wore nice dresses and jewelry. As we grew up, many of my friends wore lenses, soft lenses to be very precise, but I couldn’t wear them because they didn’t (and still don’t) have the astigmatism correction I need.

When I went for an eye checkup before my wedding and asked the doctor to suggest something about lenses that I can wear on my wedding (I couldn’t bear the idea of wearing my glasses while dressed up as a bride) the doctor recommended wearing soft lenses with as mush astigmatism correction as possible and just forget about precise clear vision. “You are not going to take a three hour long written test”, Arnab chimed in, “as long as you can recognize people, you should be good.” Well, ok.. sounded good to me. The doctor gave me a bunch of free contact lenses and I packed them all to take to Calcutta with me. Then later they all dried up and I threw them away!

A couple years back I went to another doctor. He is by far the SMARTEST doctor ever. He also gave me soft lenses with as much astigmatism correction as Acuvue allows. I would have been ok with that, but then he asked, “what about watching movies? Or driving home from somewhere you want to go without your glasses?” I was like, “huh! I missed those test cases!” As I was not much bothered about my looks, he suggested – wear just your contacts when you want to dress up, but have glasses that would only correct the remaining astigmatism. That way you can see ok at most times and when you need accurate vision wear the light weight glasses with your lenses! Such a simple solution! I wonder why this didn’t cross the other doctors’ heads!

So, that’s what I have been following so far. I wore my contact lenses to the sea side last weekend and for the first time could wear my sunglasses and could actually SEE the sea and the waves coming when I went to bathe in the sea….not a bad thing, huh?