TOOTH TRAVAILS

 How I wish wisdom teeth actually imparted some wisdom in the homo sapiens, because merely calling it by this name doesn't change your basic nature and intelligence. If it was so, we would be rid of all the morons that we come across in our daily lives and world would be a much saner place. But I am not so sure of that,  after all it is supposedly the wisest amongst us all who get duped rather easily, it is the street smart variety who get away with  the Jamtara style frauds. Guess what some retired lawmakers, judges, bureaucrats and even defence officers have found themselves at the receiving end of these cyber frauds. More about our gullibility some other time. 

We all have to pay for our sins, and in this very life as the sages say, I am sure this saying would have originated after they faced 'teething' troubles. After all we all are guilty of taking our teeth for granted, and use as also abuse them for every possible conceivable or inconceivable task apart from God ordained job of just chewing. So we have opened bottles using them as bottle openers, the rustic types like me may have eaten sugarcane putting teeth to good use peeling the skin with them, broken hard nuts such as walnuts putting them through these tests and after all these, gorged on sweets, chocolates, giving the flossing or brushing at night a miss every once in a while. Now what do you expect with all these misdemeanours, the teeth also have their limit, and finally the judgement day arrives when they inflict that nagging pain which leaves you numb. This is just a reminder to not take them for granted and then we rush to the dentist to bail us out of our misery.

Dentists are aware that despite their pleas for practising dental hygiene, we have been ignoring it and sure enough chickens come home to roost. The moment you step into the dental clinic, the other patients give you a very empathetic look as they are facing a similar ordeal. We await our turn to take the chair, which is quite akin to the execution chair, just that we are physically strapped on to it. With our mouths agape, we are quite helpless as it is, wondering what exactly is the judgement, is it a normal dental filling or a root canal treatment or it is extraction of the villainous tooth itself. At the mercy of the dentist who almost Godlike in his white apron takes one look and the feeling is akin to letting him in on our closest guarded secrets, almost as though s(he) has seen through you. He knows our dietary choices with the telltale    signs giving out all the murky details. This voluntary invasion of our privacy is quite a scary moment but then it is the Hobson’s choice literally, we need relief from the ordeal. Dentists are true democrats, no not the American Democrat, but the ones who treat everyone the same, as whether you are Trump or Kamala, Modi or Rahul, you have to be at the mercy of the dentist some time or the other in life.

As kids we were made to believe in Tooth Fairies and losing one’s milk teeth may have been a little embarrassing but I think that is the genesis of our teeth travails later in life. Permanent teeth making way for the milk teeth had a deep impact in our psyche, where we had faith in the capability of our teeth to regrow whenever they ran into trouble of any kind but alas life is not a fairy tale. So there is no tooth for a tooth, at least not a natural one.

Dentist’s tools and instruments have gradually become quite hi-tech, with a mere wave of their hand they switch on the lights and focus on that hole on the face, which hardly resembles a mouth as we normally are used to seeing it. A mouth yanked wide open, awaiting the drill is the moment of truth and reckoning for all of us, we say our prayers in our minds of course, in that state ‘speech is silver silence is golden’ is the only adage which is helpful. Gods must be crazy, not the title of the laugh riot of  the Hollywood movie, else why would they make our teeth so strong and yet so vulnerable that a pain there reduces all the roaring tigers into squeaky little mice. One session is never enough, as the dentists derive some perverse pleasure and completing the root canal in a number of phases akin to our attack operations. So in the first phase he merely sets up a sort of firm base for the eventual assault and then gradually he skilfully completes the operation and the victory signal is of course when you can finally close that hole of yours returning it to the mouth that it once was.

Every visit to the dentist is like a New Year’s eve, a day of resolves of all kinds, will never miss a flossing at night, keep clear of chocolates and ice creams and so on, but as is the fate of the other such resolutions, they don’t last even till the morrow. As a species we are quite unique as we knowingly take pleasure in indulging in pursuits which end up being rather painful. I think we all have a sadistic trait somewhere deep within. As you may have guessed, this one is just after one of those dreaded visits, so I can afford to take a panga as they say in Punjabi, hoping the next visit is at least some months away or help me God!