“I

f you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time,” wrote humorist Josh Billings. I remember the thick black-rimmed glasses my father used to wear every morning as he got hold of his cup of tea and morning newspaper, while my mother, with her specs settled on her nose, looked around for them till she’d exclaim, “Oh! I am wearing them.”

We, as kids, used to play with the extra pair lying on the table. Wearing specs, holding a stick, wielding the prop menacingly, we used to act as teachers, our role models in those days. Those glasses of my mother were my favourite. The arms