Keshab Anand Pegu ([email protected]) is an independent researcher based in Assam. http://www.epw.in/postscript/living-strabismus.html How do you know if your vision is blurred, for you have never seen more? - a Turkish saying
The word for the condition is "strabismus". Physicians, as is their wont, use a different term to camouflage it under some veil of esoterica - heterotropia - as if the first appellation is not esoteric enough. Commoners have more than one word to choose from: squint-eyed, cross-eyed, lazy-eyed. Medical journals define it as a "condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other". In a world where Cleopatra's nose is the yardstick of human beauty and where the symmetry of the Vitruvian Man is celebrated, strabismus is an undesirable condition. Onlookers are, however, more accepting of polydactyls, i e, those with more than five fingers on one hand. At the other extreme of the spectrum of social acceptance are those with prominent canine teeth - otherwise an appurtenance of carnivorous dietary habit. Some cultures employ cosmetic orthodontics to cuspidate maxillary canine, i e, the canine tooth in the upper jaw. Strabismus stands out among the motley of benign anatomical anomalies in that it is almost universally considered unsightly. The more superstitious lot takes the aversion to ridiculous proportions: an encounter with a strabismic person portends bad events, or such a person is usually sinister. Even as one ignores - as one should - such superstitious drivel, there is no denying that every squint-eyed person has his/her own tale of being misunderstood by the ambience of ignorance. Civilisations have not been too kind with the squint hombre, barring the Mayan Indians who considered asymmetrical alignment of eyes rather appealing. They are, however, only a minuscule minority. Among luminaries of the past, Rene Descartes had a curious fetish about cross-eyed women. The wife of the American President Ulysses S Grant was exceedingly self-aware. She was squint-eyed and posed for paintings only at a concealing angle. Tales of overcoming physical and social handicaps are legion. However, the perennial, albeit mild, ordeal of improperly aligned eyes has eluded all forms and forums of formal expression. This is perhaps because strabismus - particularly its benign variant - does not come in the way of one's physical acts of performance. It does not inhibit the sense of vision as much as myopia or hypermetropia does. Unlike other deformities - if this too is regarded as one - the locus of the ordeal about strabismus is located exterior to the person actually affected. The affliction of living with strabismus owes to the perception of onlookers and one's immediate surroundings. Picture a man in his mid-20s on board a public transportation system, immersed in his book so as to make best use of the commute time. His eyes savouring the exploits of Tintin in Tibet, he is oblivious of what the near future holds for him. The reader may be informed of the social milieu of the time. In what has gone down in public memory as the "Damini incident" - alluding to the 1993 Rajkumar Santoshi movie, in which a rape victim fights a losing battle with life - the event of 16 December 2012 in Munirka in south Delhi shook the conscience of the nation. Demonstrations and candle-light marches to register protest and express solidarity with the victim got the common man suddenly high on the adrenaline of morality. He became a foot soldier in the battle to annihilate all that is wrong in, and with, society. As a self-appointed custodian of public rectitude, he was out there to mete out his own brand of rough justice. Sadly, as always happens, there are collateral damages and instances where the innocent is victimised. The victim in this case was the Tintin aficionado, his grave crime being possession of squint eyes. As his eyes darted between the panels of the comic book, they were mistaken for the ogling of a lecher. A particularly pugnacious elderly fellow led the verbal assault on the young man, only to realise the victim's anatomical condition soon after, by which time damage had already been done. This is but one of the many instances of the cross that a cross-eyed has to bear. Normally, strabismus is not a functional impairment and, as such, it is not a disability in any sense or definition of the term. Strabismic people do not solicit sympathy, but then neither do the physically challenged. The physically challenged deserve sensitivity as much as the strabismic deserve the benefit of doubt. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Clean India Campaign: Let us also chip in! 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