Eyeing disorder through prism of rivalry

It was one of my earlier days a couple of decades ago as a doctor for a multinational company in Kuwait.

I was on a visit to one of the company camps when the deputy manager, a British man, came into the clinic. He was a friendly but huge bearded guy wearing thick spectacles. He wanted me to check the eyesight of one of the Pakistani drivers.

I did some preliminary checks and it soon came into focus that the driver had a serious problem with his eyesight. He was referred to an eye specialist in the city.

The driver was back in the camp by evening with new spectacles. The poor man had spent some real money also for all this.

Sadly, when I checked him again, he still could not see properly. I told the manager, “He cannot drive with those spectacles. He needs better glasses.”

The manager was not amused.

“Doctor Titus, this man has spent a lot of money for all this. Now you say that he still cannot see,” he wondered.

“Yes, he still cannot see well,” I told him.

He then told me one of the weirdest things I have heard as a doctor.

“You are saying this because you are an Indian and he is a Pakistani. You guys don’t like each other and you are always at war.”

Of course, Indians and Pakistanis don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. But my argument that he was just a patient to me and his poor eyesight had nothing to do with India-Pakistan wars fell on deaf ears.

I even quickly drew a map of India to show him where Kerala is and that Pakistan is too distant a country for us to keep eternal enmity simmering. But nothing worked. That day I understood that the concept of arch-enemies dies hard.

He then took the Pakistani driver outside the clinic and asked him to read some signs on a huge notice board at the camp entrance. As I have mentioned before, the British deputy manager himself was wearing thick glasses and it so happened that the Pakistani driver was much better than him in reading the signs on the notice board.

The deputy then convinced the general manager, an American, (after much arguments of course) that the driver was OK and that Dr Titus, being an Indian, was just creating problems for the poor Pakistani.

The next day, while I was in the city, I had a frantic phone call from the general manager. They were bringing a serious patient to one of the city hospitals and that I should take charge of the situation.

It turned out that this Pakistani driver ran over one of the surveyor guys of the company in the field. The injuries were serious.

Luckily for both India and Pakistan, this surveyor was also a Pakistani.

Otherwise, if we were to go by the belief of my British deputy manager, war might have broken out between the two countries.