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 A DEFECT OF VISION 
Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri 2007 
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 A DEFECT OF VISION Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri declares his right to be known as the author of thiswork. All rights related to this work are reserved by himJanuary 2007 
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FIRST ENCOUNTER 
She was a city girl. Her first memory was of television antennae, seenthrough a grilled window, against a lumpy mass of cloud, so white that the glarealmost hurt the eyes. It must have been the end of the rains, just before thefeathery clouds of autumn invade the high sky.Like all people of the city she had a love-hate relationship with it. This morningshe had expected the metropolis to relinquish hold over the scene only verygradually, but the bus route rode across the industrial suburbs in a short cut, andthe landscape, sliding away past her window, had soon become monotonouslyflat, with lush green paddy fields on both sides of the highway, parcelled into agrid by raised pathways, continuously turning away from one through the gapsbetween gnarled old trees. The monotony of the flat grid was such that even thedusty, noisy crossroads and marketplaces, where the bus stopped every nowand then, afforded relief by offering for scrutiny the always interesting behaviour of men and women on the roadside.People sensed the aura of the metropolis about her, casting covert glancesor, quite often, staring frankly at her. She was dressed in jeans and a top, anattire still not common in these parts, but, to her surprise, not entirely absent,too, among the girls boarding the bus in twos and threes at the different stops,their destination being, as she understood from their chatter, a degree collegefarther down the road. She wore no make-up and her hair was long and blackand braided demurely, while one or two of the college goers had bobbed hair 
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