She knows how to catch your eye

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: She was 19 when she started peering into eyeballs and removing transparent corneas soaked in blood vessels. And she did all this while several other pairs of eyes watched her. Meet Shaila Raveendran, the first Indian to be trained in Eye Banking and Manufacturing Preservative Media.

While other girls her age were trying out various shades of eye-liners, Shaila was busy learning the intricacies of the world of eye donations and eye banking. Being a student of Optometry at that age, it was difficult for Shaila to believe that eyes, which were flown from elsewhere to the LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), Hyderabad, were real and belonged to somebody who was not alive anymore.

‘‘As most people refused to handle them or do any work related to the eyes that we received at the LVPEI, I volunteered, giving a ray of hope to blind people,’’ recalls Shaila. ‘‘Initially, I just used to note down a few points as told by the Director and then from just noting down the findings, I started cleaning the bottles, labelling the eyes, designing a form to document findings and went on to examine the eyes myself,’’ she says.

Shaila Raveendran