Dental (Mis)Adventures

It was my dad who drilled into me (more than my brother because he was harder to drill into, I guess) about dental hygiene. He personally set a bloody example, pun intended, by vigorously brushing them till such time that blood would accompany the froth and water. He is currently suffering from such serious attacks on his dental fortress that they are close to being declared a heritage site and is in serious threat of demolition. Following religiously in his footsteps, it wasn't long before I would encounter serious threat to my own set of off-whites (I guess I've managed to rub off the whiteness thanks to my ministrations every day).

This current issue started as a dull ache on the left side of my mouth. While exploring the region with my tongue, I deduced with consternation that it was a slightly odd-looking tooth. Over a few months and countless explorations with the tongue, I knew that it wasn't odd-looking tooth but an extremely decayed one. Even though I don't exactly suffer from a whitecoat syndrome, I basically don't like doctors much, dentists even less. I associate them with, well not pain, but with huge bills. Since my economic condition, of late, has been kind of shaky, I wasn't too keen on any kind of medical checkup. Finally, as it happens so very frequently in such cases, the decision was made by the circumstances rather than me. The pain got to such an extent that I was finding it difficult to forget that I do have a set of teeth. That drove the final nail into the coffin.

A lady dentist had set up office near my house recently, and I thought it would be a good idea to visit that doctor. The feeling in the back of my mind that usually lady dentists are rather glamorous tilted the scales in favor of this new doctor. That feeling got a shot in the leg when I visited her and found that she was rather ordinary looking. Anyway, she examined me and found that I had a badly decayed wisdom tooth. I was happy!!! I must have some amount of wisdom to have a wisdom tooth, right!?! After giving me an antibiotic and a painkiller, she instructed me to come after a couple of days.

Couple of days later, I presented, the pain dulled to a certain extent by the medication. She directed me to the electric chair (just kidding!!! it was a rather pleasant chair), wore an apron over me, and got down to the business of pulling my wisdom out. She gave me a shot of anesthesia and another when I seemed to have no response to the first one. After that, she took a rather dangerous-looking tool and started plucking at my tooth. After about 10 minutes, I saw her pulling something out with evident glee. That turned out to be a false alarm as the lower portion of the tooth decided that it didn't want to leave my mouth. That resolve on my tooth's part only seemed to fuel her resolve to get it out that she got down to the task with renewed vigor. After sweating profusely and panting hard (only from the exertion of pulling at my tooth), she finally realized that this was one stubborn tooth. But it took another 20 minutes for her to finally give up. Well, not totally.....she asked me to return in the evening when she would have a dental surgeon do some kind of an operation.

In the evening, after loading my pocket with cash and mind with apprehension, I presented myself at the dentist's office. She had the surgeon waiting, some professor at some college. As in the morning, I was directed to the seat, and after one anesthesia and without much preamble, the attack on the remaining portion of my wisdom resumed. It wasn't long before I was crying bloody murder, and they had to give another shot of anesthesia to pacify me. I guess more than the actual physical pain, it was a psychological one seeing those dangerous instruments. One thing I've decided after this episode is that I'll never ever mess with a dentist. The second anesthesia finally did the trick. It made me still long enough for the surgeon to drill quite a bit of bone and pull the remaining part of my wisdom tooth. I had lost about an hour and loads of fluid (blood+sweat) and gained quite a lot of palpitations by that time. One major reason for the latter was the dentist coming up with the bright idea of asking Ranji to stand next to me, hold my hands, and comfort me. Seeing her face mirroring the damage that was being done to my denture set-up, I really got worried as to what exactly was being done to me. Anyway, as I keep saying, all's well that ends well.

Now, a week later, I am minus a tooth, a bit of wisdom, a bit of cash, and the pain I was having. Tomorrow, I have to go remove the stitches that were put in place. After having been to hell and back, suture removal sounds like child's play.

Foot in Mouth Disease

All through my life, I've been suffering from foot in mouth disease. Though not exactly similar to the bovine variety, this disease can have equally disastrous outcome. I guess the primary reason for me being repeatedly subjected to this is my often misplaced sense of doing something good. Quite a few times, I've had instances wherein I've got this inner voice howling at its topmost to not do something, and my insaner half of the brain still goes ahead and does it. I guess one reason could be the lack of coordination between the various departments in my body. I've got a corporate set-up where the sensory organs are given more freedom and do not always have to take permission from brain or coordinate with it in taking actions. That has resulted in certain interesting situations like me searching for something while holding it in my hand, eating something which was waiting to be fed to the wastebasket, etc.

Well, coming back to my disease, it reared up in full force the other day. My uncle and his daughter (my cousin) had come here as she was about to join a hotel management institute in the city. Along with them came a friend of hers and that girl's dad. This dad guy seemed like an aspiring bore champion, but being an Indian brought up on Athithi Devo Bhava ideals, I and Ranji treated them pretty well (the daughter was reasonably okay). While they were about to leave, I and my uncle were discussing regarding me being my cousin's local guardian when suddenly I had this acute attack of FMD (for medical transcriptionists, you might not find this in most of the reference material; please refer the title of this passage to get the full form). My brain sent a message to my mouth to close itself and stop functioning, but since mouth has partial autonomy, it decided to open up and extend the invitation of me being a local guardian to the other girl. Why would I want to subject myself to such torture from this guy (obviously he'll be coming over from time to time) I have no idea? Now, some might figure its the girl, but that's the funny part - she isn't beautiful enough to tempt me. Moreover, my brain is pretty sure that the memo issued to mouth stated "Close Yourself Now."

I'm not sure where or how exactly I should be taking a treatment, but till I get treated of this affliction, I am sure there are going to be several more instances wherein I'm going to suffer great pains.

Kavyaed

Let me state beforehand that this passage is not Kavyaed. I guess that term hasn't yet come into English, but don't worry, very soon it is going to be. All the readers of this blog are going to be at an advantage because you can always claim that you read this word first at this blog. This word would mean creating (mainly writing) something which bears a close resemblance to another average (or even below average) creation without trying to mask the original in any significant manner. For example, 80% of Bollywood movies could be termed as Kavyaed. The other 15% are copies of reasonably good films whereas another 5% (and I know I'm grossly overestimating here) could (the operating word here is could) be termed as original.

The first time I Kavyaed was back in 8th standard. Come to think of it, it could very well have been Haried. I was very much into Louis Lamour, J.T. Edson, etc. I imagined myself as a kind of Dusty Fog (because of my own limited height) and hoped to strut around in jeans, stetson on head, stubble on the chin, burning cigarette on the lips. I started writing novels which all had a hero who looked like this. The problem in my case was primarily that I wasn't offered a six-figure contract or else I would have put in more effort. In any case, all of those novels never went beyond the first chapter. By the time I finished my 12th, I had completed Godfather at least 20 times. Now, I didn't want my hero to be any longer a cowboy. After all, who would want to be a penniless, dirty cowboy when you could be a sauve, rich mafia don. So, now my novels started having a distinct Italian flavor. But then again, you can imagine a writing which is depending 99.99% on Mario Puzo on everything related to mafia. Add to that the fact that I hadn't been outside Thrissur (a small town in a small state called Kerala) but was using my imagination to create imaginary countries with imaginary cities with imaginary streets, etc., and you can imagine how horrible the entire writing would have been. By the time I had finished my graduation, it slowly dawned on me that I didn't have it in me to even write a short story. Then I did dabble a bit in poetry which were, at best, passable before that too degenerated. I had forgotten all about writing when Kavya Vishwanathan appeared with her bag of goods. Now, she has awoken the plagiaristic juices in me. Look out for One Thousand Weeks of Being Alone by Hari Prabhakaran.

Sunday Lost

I and Ranji value our Sundays like anything because that is the only day we get totally for ourselves. This Sunday, though, was different because we got invited for a ceremonial crossbelt (upanayanam) ceremony. Well, the ceremony was on Monday, but since I couldn't make it on that day, this person was adamant that I come to his house on Sunday. Since this person happens to work in my team, and since I would need him to do certain extra bit for me, I couldn't exactly say no to him. So, we got up early (early enough for a Sunday) and went through all the excuses possible in the world to extricate ourselves, but when we couldn't convince ourselves with any of them, we thought we might as well get done with it. We were pretty clear in our minds that since the distance involved was pretty daunting, we wouldn't waste money on autorickshaw but would stick to BMTC's luxuriously ricketty buses. We presented ourselves in pretty clean condition at around 11 a.m. at Vignan Nagar bus-stop. In about 10 minutes' time, we were uniformly covered in dust. Ranji promptly let out her usual tirade against BMTC, BDA, Bangalore, and South India as a whole. Fifty minutes and quite a few more curses later, we finally got a bus. As we lowered ourselves to the comforts of a seat and asked for an IndiraNagar ticket, the conductor told us in a bored tone that the bus would go only till BEML Gate. Fine, we said, and took the ticket, thinking we would catch an autorickshaw from there to IndiraNagar. After reaching BEML Gate, checking around with a few auto drivers, and getting rejected (no surprises there), we finally managed to find a guy to take us to IndiraNagar. It was only after reaching IndiraNagar and spending around 15 minutes in the busstop that we finally realized that Gods were having fun with us because buses weren't coming at all. So, after calculating and recalculating the remaining balance in our bank accounts, we finally decided to catch an autorickshaw till this person's house. It cost us a bomb to take a rick till there and come back (and come back we had to as he expected us to pay double meter if we didn't), but I must say it was good we went. We were treated like royalty, attended to by one and all. The result of it was that we were pretty tired by the end of it all. Our wait for the next Sunday has started.....