Sometime back, I
had indicated how I embarked on
writing my first text book in
Control Systems Engineering.
After returning from abroad cancelling part
of my leave, I had nothing to
do other than routine teaching.
Since I had written two books
and a few popular science articles in Malayalam,
writing was not akin to me. Since I
was doing most of the writing using
my personal computer in the office or at home,
editing was also not difficult. I
was doing most of my writing
myself as I do not have the patience to
correct the proof a typist gives me
and then do it over and over again except when
official letters are involved. As I was giving
a course on ‘Advanced Control Systems’ for
the final year BTech Electrical students,
the contents of the book were chosen as the
same. This could fill in the need of an exclusive book
for the second course in Control Systems offered for many
universities in India and abroad. As I was
teaching the same set of topics, there
was no need for extra reading of books and I
started writing as I teach in my class
with the help of a black board.
From early years of my
teaching, I was emulating some of my good teachers like the
late Prof.S.Hariharan at
TKMCE using the black board extensively to
write what I teach and many of my students may have
copied down the board work truthfully. Since Control
Systems is a semi-mathematical subject,
this was ideally suited for my teaching
methodology. Also, the contents and layout of
the standard text books written
by famous authors I have referred to earlier
must have affected by writing, but more
or less it was my way of presenting things. I
used to refer to books only for selecting the problems.
My way of writing books or articles then and
even now was to type it myself, edit and correct it all by
myself. I used to draw sketches in
pencil or pen on paper so that those who
are good in drawing could draw it properly,
as drawing had been my weakness all along. As I
was writing the book, it became
a reasonably big book with nearly 10 chapters and approximately
600 printed pages including figures. I was spending most
of my spare time typing
this book in the department except when I was
taking class or attending some official meeting in the college. I
used to take the unfinished work home on a floppy (no pen
drive then) and continue the work at home after dinner.
Since those days most of
the computer monitors were of the Cathode Ray Tube
(CRT) type, the radiation from the screen must have
affected my eyes. I have many
defects in my character, one of which is this
anxiety to complete a work I have started by
working almost continuously day in and day out.(sort of completion mania,
you may call it)
On all week days, I was driving my
Maruti 800 to NITC along
with my daughter in law in the morning. On one of these days, something strange happened. Probably I had been
typing a bit more on the previous night. As I took
my car to the main road and was just entering
the main road to Medical College Calicut
at Arayidathu palam, I saw something black in one of my
eyes. It was something like rain
water dripping down the front glass of a
car full of dirt. I was feeling as if these
were flowing in front of one my eyes. There was no other discomfort.
By the time I reached Medical College, this
was almost gone and I left my
daughter there and proceeded to NITC. I
did not have any further problem during the day.
When I returned home in the evening, casually I told
about this to my daughter
doing post-graduation in Ophthalmology and
immediately she was alerted.
She was almost scolding me why I did not tell her in the
morning itself and asked me to go to her teacher and
Head of the Department immediately. We went there and the
Doctor examined me and told me “ Sir, this is
something serious. If you don’t do some repair using laser immediately,
your eyesight on this eye will be gone. This is a threatened
detachment of the retina which will result in
permanent loss of sight. Fortunately for you, an
expert from Aravind Hospital Madurai is
vising Commonwealth Eye hospital Calicut every
Thursday and you can meet him tomorrow to do
the procedure there. I will call him and
introduce you.” In fact, one of my
colleagues had recently lost the eyesight of
one of his eyes by the same problem, retinal detachment
as he did not take immediate care. Actually, what I
saw in my eyes was nothing but bleeding in the vitriol
between the cortex and retina which appeared to
be black streams of dirt. Next day I approached the visiting doctor
and he corrected the break in the retina by laser surgery and
advised me rest for three weeks. Even though it was in
the middle of the semester and I was engaging a class on Linear Systems
Analysis for the 4th semesters I had to
take one month’s leave. After the surgery, a
few black spots still remain dancing in front of my
right eye which does not disturb me seriously.
But I know these are always present and I cannot ignore it totally.
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