Filter Coffee #079

On the Dentist's Chair

Dear Readers, 

Happy New Year to each one of you and your families. 

It is my wife’s birthday on the 2nd — don’t worry, I remembered to wish her! In fact, I did better than that. I took her to Dubai to meet her cousin and also visit the Expo. This FC, therefore, comes to you from the UAE. 

We ushered in 2022 on the 31st night at a friends & family get together at a party based around a casino* theme. Our friends Mahesh and Tara were the perfect hosts. We all dressed up as if we were going to a glamorous Hollywood-style casino. In reality, going by my experience, hardly anyone cares how you are dressed. Yes, it is possible that you go wearing a tuxedo, hoping for a run of luck, but come out in underpants which pretty much describes how your luck ran out.

*Casa in Latin means house and Casino in Italian means ‘little house’ where gentlemen went to gamble. Thus, the name of the Moroccan city of Casablanca translates to ‘Whitehouse’. Remember Frida Kahlo’s La Casa Azul, ‘The Blue House’?

FC # 78 on ‘To Gift or Not’ was much appreciated and many readers shared their views as well.

Arun Balakrishnan, the former CMD of HPCL says: “After the disappearance of the Joint Family, the traditional revered space for the old has diminished in many families.”

A P Thomas says: “With the disintegration of the joint family, the issue has aggravated. There are cases where the children are impatiently waiting for the parent to die and then set claim to the property.”

P A Verghese says: “For those seniors who have no nest egg, there is really no option but to depend on their children for their survival.” 

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🦷 The Dentist’s Chair

In our life, we experience moments of embarrassment, discomfiture, disconcertment, shame, awkwardness, mortification and similar moments which make us squirm. These moments are as pleasurable as being in a dentist’s chair.

All of us are in some measure nervous or anxious when we sit on the dentist’s chair and it moves from something like an angle of 105 degrees to 160 degrees. We shut our eyes, grip the chair handles, open our mouths wide hoping the dentist remembers the famous oath, ‘to deal with the tooth, only the tooth and nothing but the tooth.’ 

Dental care was an unknown concept during our growing up days. Our index finger served as the toothbrush to scrub our teeth with a pinkish powder called ‘Nanjangud Tooth Powder’ made in the town of Nanjangud, about 18 miles away from the city of Mysore where I was born and brought up (as my grammar improved, I wondered why it was called tooth and not ‘teeth’ powder). I don’t think I had ever seen a dentist’s chair, let alone sat in one, until after I was 18. When I did, I realised how ‘pleasurable’ it was.

I think the phrase ‘as pleasurable as being in a dentist’s chair’ serves as a good idiom to describe what one goes through in those moments of discomfiture, embarrassment, etc. (imagine my plight if I had forgotten about my wife’s birthday).

The first instance when I experienced this ‘pleasure’ was when I was studying law. My father, a lawyer himself, used to assign me some drafting work and I would go to him feeling pleased with my draft. He would take a good look and tell me ‘This is no doubt some good English but not the kind of pleading one can file in court.’ The moment was as pleasurable as being in a dentist chair. Of course, he would later guide me and tell me how to avoid using flowery language that robbed the case of its seriousness and how to present a case focusing on facts and law.

In our ordinary life, we experience such moments. My elder brother wanted to be an engineer and was keen on joining an engineering college of repute in Mysore. In those days when merit alone mattered, the admission fee was Rs. 1000. He met all the threshold criteria, but in the late fifties Rs.1000 was a big ask, so he had to forego the opportunity and join a science course. That moment must have been a ‘tooth extraction’ moment for him. (inflationtool.com says that Rs. 100 in the 60s  is equal to Rs. 8000 in ‘21)

In the 50s and 60s, it was customary for eligible bachelors to come with their parents to the girl’s house. The girl’s mother would sing paeans about the girl’s housekeeping abilities, and even make the girl sing! In fact, these were familiar scenes even in the movies of the sixties. The discomfort of having her ‘talents’ showcased by her parents in their anxiety to seal the alliance must have made the girl squirm with embarrassment. 

Though in the current era such ‘girl-seeing’ is less common, it still happens in many communities dominated by parents, where the girl is paraded as a commodity before many a suitor until one of them finds her acceptable. To add insult to injury the acceptance by the boy’s family could come at a price — the dowry — which is prohibited but is still being demanded surreptitiously. Passive dowry harassment continues unabated and unfortunately remains undisclosed. Both the parents, who can ill afford to meet the demands, and the daughter, who sees her parents overextending themselves to get her married, experience pain and mental anguish.

In my growing up days, there was no choice given to a woman whose husband abused her or cheated on her. She was expected to either hide it behind a facade of normalcy for fear of hurting her parents or suffer the indignities heaped on her for want of economic freedom and in the interest of the welfare children born out of that wedlock — that ironically locked her in inescapably. As painful as a root canal!

Regardless of women’s liberation, emancipation and feminist movements, gross abuse of women’s rights continue unabated. Career women face sexual harassment at the workplace and not everyone can blow the whistle, particularly if they are the sole bread earner and cannot afford their character to be tarnished. Many suffer silently the indignities heaped on them by their male superiors.

Some men are not comfortable working under a female boss, as they feel it is demeaning. The male reportees may gang up and make the female boss the target of their ridicule in private. Case of impotent resentment aimed at a competent boss! 

Lies, dishonesty and treachery erode trust. There are people who lie through their teeth to protect themselves or to hide an unpleasant truth. They take advantage of the kindness of others who shy away from confronting them with truth to avoid unpleasantness. Like the case of a son-in-law who forged the signature of the father-in-law, and the father-in-law deciding to not confront the cheat for fear of his daughter being hurt. The father and daughter both chose to suffer silently — perhaps like people who have impacted wisdom teeth but avoid going to the dentist.

Life is full of such painful situations which are either invited by us or inflicted on us, reminding us of the pleasures of being in a dentist's chair. You don’t want to sit in it and yet you cannot avoid it. 

Let me lighten the mood and make you guys smile with a few dentist jokes — I am sure my dentist Dr. Shailaja won’t mind 😁.

• Did you hear about the Dentist of The Year getting a plaque?

• Has anyone told you that Jill took Jack to the dentist to fix his crown?

• A dentist and a manicurist had an argument and they fought tooth and nail!

• Q: Which is the best time to go to the dentist?  A: Tooth-hurty!

Dear Readers, I hope the new year will herald a new dawn. Please continue to be on alert and don’t shun the mask but decidedly shun gatherings. See you next week, hopefully. Dubai is such a distraction!