Kathmandu, Feb. 25 -- The grey mist hangs heavy in the early morning, wrapping the trees, silencing the birds and reducing the sun to an orange disk. We all shiver in the damp air, but none more so than the rows of patients sitting on blue plastic chairs after a long overnight stay in the community hospital, wrapped in shawls and blankets following eye surgeries the day before.

Mostly old and patently poor, each has one eye neatly taped with gauze, except for one old man in a blue fleece cap and blank expression, who has both eyes covered.

This morning the bandages are due to come off. All tremble in anticipation of the revelation of restored sight as much as the chill of the Tarai winter.

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