This note is for the many people who have been writing to me, asking how I am.

I am at home, recovering from a severe Anterior Uveitis that has (hopefully temporarily) sent my right eye out for lunch. The inflammation is under control, thanks to the excellent treatment I received, and right now it is primarily treatment and waiting for something to happen.

The trouble started on April 27th, when I started feeling pain in the right eye. My GP tried treating it with eye drops, but things quickly got worse, and by the 29th I started losing sight in the eye. Luckily, my GP is not the “chip-on-the-shoulder” kind of doctor, and quickly referred me to specialists, which eventually led me to Dr.Colin Nazareth and his team at St.John’s hospital.

Some common questions quickly answered – no, I am not totally blind. My left eye is functioning and carrying the brunt, but you should try picking up a glass of water without the benefit of stereo vision!

And yes, I can work – in the sense that I am in bed, working on my notebook. Thanks to the Internet, I am not cut off from work, so I am getting stuff done.

The timing for this incident couldn’t have been worse – it killed a seminar of mine scheduled for next week, killed any plans to make Shubha’s birthday on the 11th something special and killed any holiday plans (Anjali and Shubha aren’t going to forgive me for this – we were supposed to go to Ooty around the 24th for 4-5 days). The latter happened because my doctors do not want me to travel by road or go anywhere where I cannot get prompt treatment in case of an emergency.

I do have to travel to New Delhi, where I have been invited by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to speak on OpenSource and eGovernance at their event on the 27th and 28th of May. The focus of the event is “Media as a Partner in the Development Debate & Free and Open Source Software”, and there are a number of well known speakers participating, including my old comrade-in-arms Kishore Bhargava (who will be speaking on Low Cost Computing for Education). Hopefully, the organisers will get our talks back-to-back, allowing us to do our familiar AC-KB ping-pong talk that we used to do in the 90′s. I absolutely enjoy giving talks with Kishore!

I just hope that my eye improves by then!

In the meanwhile, I have been spending my time writing, and I am amazed how much I have been able to put together these past few days.

I also acquired a new PDA during this period, but that will be subject of another bout of writing soon.

Finally, many many many thanks to the people who have been SMSing me, calling me, writing to me and even visiting to enquire about my health. I am seriously humbled seeing how many friends I have! This really contributed a lot to my getting better! I even had Phenom dropping in for an impromptu jam session in the basement! Talk about Music as medicine!