I have had glasses ever since I was 10 years old. As a kid I used to wear really thick durable plastic frames, which evolved to metal frames in my teenage years, and then back to durable plastic frames in college. My power used to increase incessantly until I stopped growing and so I’ve probably paid a visit to an ophthalmologist every single year of my life in India. Today for the first time I went for an eye check-up in the US.

In India, doctors are extremely competent and hard-working. My eye doctor would spend 10 mins tops to determine what my prescription was, and then move on to the next patient and he would always get it correct. The doctors are also very caring and thorough, when I would be having my eyes checked after a fairly long time the doctor would conscientiously dilate my eyes and make me wait in the cramped up waiting room overflowing with patients, so that he could check my retinas and all the insidey stuff. He could easily not have mentioned my retinas and saved his precious time, and it would not have bothered me in the slightest.

In US, the doctors treat patients as intelligent beings. The ophthalmologist, and even her assistant, explained to me what all the instruments were doing, without taking any substantial amount of time as they were talking to me while performing the tests. The doctor had an app on her iPad on which she noted all my reactions to the various lenses that she tested on me. Then she diligently filled out an entire page of checklists to make sure she didn’t miss anything before sending me off as a slightly wiser being.

Indian medicine needs to implement this outlook. I’m sure there some doctors who do it on their own accord but in general doctors are treated as divine beings and they’re supposed to take care of you as someone who’s better than you. This is a manifestation of the class system that is intertwined with all facets of the society, the patients are the subservient class and the doctors are their feudal lords. I’m angry of the fact that before today it never bothered me that I was not aware of the reason I was getting a certain treatment or a drug in India, I did get cured but I’m medically illiterate.

When I went to get my glasses they had a camera which zoomed in on my face and took precise measurements of the various parts of my eyes, and the glasses were ready in an hour. This I understand is a privilege of the rich, and there is no way Indians can afford this kind of precision.

While I was waiting for my glasses to be made there was conveniently located Chipotle and Starbucks next door and the day outside was too pretty to worry about anything. Afterwards I walked back from Canton to Hopkins Med campus via Fell’s Point along the beautiful pier. The sun was hanging low in the sky, there were yachts marooned in the water which had a thin layer of ice on it, except close to the yachts. I sat on the Pier 13 at Fell’s point where there’s open air Argentine Tango in the summers, there were skaters trying out dangerous moves nearby, there were people sitting outside and drinking beer amidst the sound of music pouring out from the open doors of the nearby bars and pubs, and everybody seemed happy. Not too bad for winter’s day.