Today, as I walked over to the operation theatre, I was ambushed by a crowd of patients who closed in behind me, so that I led a procession, and felt like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn. 
A colourful Rajput with mutton-chop whiskers and orange turban, who had been hiding behind my garden gatepost, greeted me in courtly language: 
"Hazoor (your honour), I have come a long way, having heard your great name. Let me see the world!" 
Since I could not resist a glance and friendly words, others felt encouraged, and I quickened my pace. 
"Can my father smoke his hookah after operation?" asked another. 
Still another: "Why can't I see with my glass eye?" 
A portly self-important city dweller from Bengal next approached to ask: "Where is the head doctor?" 
"I am the head doctor." 
Taken aback, and in an aside to a friend: "But this is a mere boy!"

Passing under the central tower that was the main entrance to the hospital, I found a buffalo had left natural evidence of its recent presence; but just as I was about to step aside, a woman rushed forward and scooped it up for fuel with her bare hands. 
Nearby a goat-herd was selling goats' milk on hoof to patients, and I came on a group of old men wearing eye-shades of Green cloth - a sign that they had had their cataract operations about a week before. 
Sight still dim, and not yet fitted with glasses, they were trying out stout bamboo staves being sold by a hawker who had just moved in. 
In a nearby corner squatted an aged bespectacled scribe (not on my staff), penning news of patient's progress to their distant homes. Scribes are an institution in India and can be found in all bazaars.. 
As the crowds of patients increased and threatened to swamp me, I was rescued by two Santal orderlies - self-appointed bodyguards - who kept the more insistent at bay and shouted with great importance: 
"Make way for the Doctor Sahib!" until I reached the operation theatre at last. 
At this point a selection of thirty patients is made for the day's 'Operation List', a procedure that became easier when I learned the psychology of the people and introduced queuing in the jungle. Unaccustomed to chairs, but used to squatting on the ground, a crowd readily responded to the command to sit down, while a tap on the heads of the tardy caused general amusement and a general atmosphere of good humour prevailed. Record cards were then examined, and the unlucky asked to come the following day. I then squeezed through the guarded Operation Theatre door, which was practically under a state of siege. The chosen thirty formed a queue outside and three were admitted at a time, each accompanied by a relative. In the meantime the relatives of those not selected and the idle curious took their stance outside the theatre windows to get a good view of the 'show'. 

Three operating tables had been placed to form a triangle, in the centre of which I stood, moving from table to table, giving sight to eye after eye. These tables were never allowed to become empty till the morning's quota of thirty cataracts had been dealt with. When I moved to table two, number one was filled again - Hindu patients surprisingly allowing their caste marks to be scrubbed off their foreheads with water by an outcaste Santal aboriginal. 
 
 

And so it went on all morning. One was not keeping good time if the rate was less than ten eyes an hour. 

When patients mounted the tables, it was often the climax to many months of planning, saving, and hope. To some in addition, it seemed a religious pilgrimage to a Christian medical shrine. Some assured me they would pray for my long life and that I would have many male heirs. Others, deeply moved, beat themselves on their chests, invoking the shades of their ancestors. All, child-like in trust, made excellent patients. A local anaesthetic was dropped into the affected eye, which permeated its interior microscopic cells, making possible a painless operation, as well as co-operation from the patient when asked to look in various directions. The opaque cataractous lens which was the cause of the blindness lay deep behind the pupil and iris of the eye, and with delicate precision and finger-tip concentration had to be 'coaxed' forward through the pupil before it could be extracted. One kept alert too for any unexpected movement by the patient, or even in the vicinity. Today I was just in time to side-step a tackle round the ankles by an old woman who threw herself at my feet calling me 'God'. Later in the morning, a well-dressed Brahmin innocently lifted an instrument from my aseptic tray to inspect it, and when I told him it would have to be re-sterilised, he was indignant: "I, a Brahmin, unclean?" After each operation, I held up my hand before the patient's eyes, so that he might see at once his years of darkness were ended. Tears of gratitude and emotion flowed down the cheeks of relatives, calling on the Hindu God Vishnu the Preserver for his favour. On their discharge from hospital two weeks later, many travelled to the nearby holy Hindu city of Deoghar to make flower offerings before the god's image. I gave to many the tiny pea-like lens I had removed from his eye, which he later wrapped carefully in a scrap of cloth to take back to his home village. Its display there might send another score of blind the following year. Meanwhile, eyes were being bandaged, and advice being given on post operative care that would have sounded odd in a normal hospital: "Take goats' milk for four days, and don't pour water on your head (the Indian method of washing). But oil may be rubbed on it." Very occasionally the morning routine of cataract operations could be dramatically interrupted and one had to be ready for anything. Once the queue of patients outside rushed the Santal door-keeper and broke in. I was caught with a tiny ophthalmic scalpel inside an open eye. Slipping the instrument out and grasping my patient's hand with a word of reassurance, I directed a minor engagement to restore order by evicting the intruder. I asked my patient to repeat the name of Sita Ram - an extremely useful beneficent deity who always acted as a sedative. 
One day an Indian police inspector arrived to arrest my patient; and on another a complete wedding party blew in with a twelve-year old bride bruised by a fall from a bullock-cart. 
Sometimes it was just a friendly Indian District Officer who happened to be passing, and called in to see me. 
But now, the morning's stint had been accomplished, and I felt mentally as well as physically tired. I slipped out of the theatre, ignoring the crowds still accosting me and broke into a run without stopping till I reached the haven of my bungalow, seeking to escape the blind. 
I was the 'Eye-Maker'.