by Vani Viswanathan
[box] You may wonder what people in villages do when they need dental help. People from remote, far-flung villages, a good few hours from civilization (i.e., towns or villages with dentists). This is the story of one such village. And remember this happened some 20 years ago, and the author doesn’t profess knowledge of what happens these days. Vani Viswanathan writes a story laced with humour to celebrate the concept of the first ever issue of Spark – the January 2010 issue themed, ‘New Beginnings’.[/box] [box type=”info”]MONTH: January 2010
THEME: NEW BEGINNINGS
CONCEPT: The first ever issue of Spark showcased a theme in line with its own beginning. We were an excited bunch and tried our best to make it as professional as it could get in terms of both contributions and the design.
FEATURED WRITER OF JANUARY 2010: Deepa Venkatraghvan, Chartered Accountant and Author.
Looking back, it still feels like yesterday. What a delight it was when we hit the publish button for the first-ever time in Spark’s earlier WordPress blog! We put a lot of thought into the design – particularly the cover page. The cover photograph symbolised the essence of Spark. We used a newspaper background to represent Word, the colourful petals to signify the World around us in different colours and the flower at the centre to symbolise Wisdom. Looking at it another way, the newspaper represents writing, the colourful petals, a palette of colours and therefore art, and the flower in the centre signifying photography. [/box]
53-year-old Mani stood staring at the new poster stuck at the village tea shop. The poster showed a set of teeth and some writings in Tamil. “What’s this?” he asked the shopkeeper. “Teeth doctor coming to our village!” the shopkeeper replied. “There are doctors specifically for the teeth?!” Mani thought, left the shop, and walked back home, still thoughtful.
He told his wife about it and was eager to have a prolonged discussion on the topic, but she snapped back at him and asked him to shut up; he had no right to talk about doctors and their strange jobs when he was a useless, un-masculine man, given that he couldn’t bring home any money from his useless farm that grew useless things that were useless at fetching any money at the village market. Mani shrank back in the corner under the prayer altar of their one-room hut, and sat there chewing the blade of grass he had plucked from a neighbour’s field on the way home.
Some three hours later, after he had shamefacedly swallowed any talk about his growling hunger for a good hour for fear of another rebuke from his wife, she announced that dinner was ready. He shuffled to the other corner near the wood-fuelled stove, the part of the house that served as the kitchen. She placed on the floor, with barely-hidden annoyance, a battered aluminium plate with some unrecognisable food.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Tapioca from your farm.”
Mani gulped. It looked very suspicious. “Have you even cooked it?”
“Listen, Mani, if you don’t want to eat it you are free to get out of the house and find your own dinner!”
Mani gulped again, and made a ball of the rice and put it in his mouth. He followed this, gingerly to say the least, wondering how it would taste, with a piece of the tapioca.
His first reaction was that it didn’t taste bad. She had wisely used the limited spices available: the dried red chilli, salt and turmeric. His second reaction was one of pain: there was a huge piece of a stone-like-something that he had bitten hard into in his enthusiasm and surprise at the taste, and it had hurt. He yelled out in pain.
His wife yelled too, but at him. “Now what?!”
“suv-ving-in-va-food!” he said, food still in his mouth. He was sure some tooth had broken inside, and he wasn’t sure if swallowing the food would be a good idea. He spat the food into his hand and picked at it to see if there was any tooth-like object in there. Sure enough, he saw something that vaguely resembled a chicken bone, a tiny piece of a chicken bone. He then ran his tongue through his teeth to spot which one it might be. He felt something sharp and his tongue stopped there. His wisdom tooth was broken, the one at the lower right.
After rinsing his mouth with water and finishing the rest of the rice (he carefully hid the tapioca from his wife’s view and threw them out in the bushes near where he usually did his business), and went to bed. A few minutes before falling asleep, he suddenly remembered something, and he broke into a grin. He could see the teeth doctor whenever the man got there.
***
When Mani made his way to the dental clinic on the very first day of its opening, there was already a crowd outside. He wasn’t surprised; he knew many of them would be interested in finding out about the teeth doctor. When he went in, though, he was surprised. A lady was sitting there, with a mask over her nose. He suddenly felt very shy, and had to lower his face as he answered her question on why he was here. “The wisdom tooth is chipped,” he said, and after a moment’s thought, untied a knot at the end of his dhoti and took out what the dentist recognised (not without some disgust) was the broken piece.
“Thanks for the piece, but we won’t need it,” she said, putting it away with her gloved hand.
She made him sit on a chair and lean with his head thrown back, and pulled open his mouth with what Mani realised was a metal rod, and leaned close to his mouth to peek inside. Suddenly Mani felt ashamed about all the garlic that his wife’s sambar had, and wished he could have chewed on some cumin to neutralise the smell. The woman, though, didn’t bat an eyelid; Mani guessed the whole village stank of garlic or onion, and she’d smelled enough to get used to it.
She then made him sit up straight. “Do you brush your teeth regularly?”
He nodded. “Every morning.”
“With what?”
“What else? A neem twig!”
“Do you use tooth powder?”
“Can’t afford it, doctor-amma. We use brick dust.”
“What caused this tooth to break?”
“Err… I ate a piece of tapioca that had something hard in it. Bit on it hard and it broke the tooth.”
“Alright, we can fix this easily. But I see quite a few cavities in your teeth too. Do you never rinse your mouth with water after eating?”
“No… not really…”
“Hmm. I’m sure your teeth hurt quite often. Correct?”
“Oh yes. When I eat anything hot, cold, anything. But that happens to everyone. Even the man who grows potatoes in the farm next to mine says so.”
“I think I know who you are talking about. He came here too.”
“So, doctor-amma, what do I have to do?”
“For starters, come again next Monday. We need to fill the cavity-ridden teeth and put a ‘cap’ on your broken wisdom tooth. Second, I have to teach you to use a tooth brush.”
***
Mani went home with a toothbrush and a little tube of toothpaste that evening, and his wife was enraged. “You useless donkey! Why did you spend on this useless thing?? Your teeth are rotting anyway. I have made dal today, maybe they will melt in the heat of the dal!”
“Stop yelling, the doctor gave it to me for free! She says I can get all my cavities fixed!”
“It’s a woman?! You shameless man, have you been going around showing unknown women your dirty teeth?! What will you show her next? Will you undo your…”
Mani left the hysteric woman alone in the house and went outside to the bush near where he did his business. He pulled the toothbrush and the toothpaste out. He squeezed some paste out of the tube and using his right index finger, spread it on the toothbrush, and began massaging his teeth gently. It had a pleasant, pudina-like taste. He didn’t feel like spitting it out, and although he knew he shouldn’t, swallowed it and drank some water. He liked the cold feeling that spread through his mouth, and the pleasant smell that he could smell when he let out a small gasp. He liked this toothbrush and toothpaste and how it made him feel cleaner. He swore he would do this every day, till he died. He had to figure a way out to be able to afford it though. Perhaps not growing tapioca would have to be the first step, he thought.
Vani Viswanathan is often lost in her world of books and A R Rahman, churning out lines in her head or humming a song. Her world is one of frivolity, optimism, quietude and general chilled-ness, where there is always place for outbursts of laughter, bouts of silence, chocolate, ice cream and lots of books and endless iTunes playlists from all over the world. Vani was a Public Relations consultant in Singapore and decided enough is enough with the struggle to find veggie food everyday, and returned to India after seven long years away. Vani blogs at http://chennaigalwrites.blogspot.com
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