An article published today in the NYTimes, about the shortage of dentists in Britain, took me down the path of nostalgia. Yup, it was about seven years back. It was a cold December morning and there I was, covered from head to toe, in one of the remote classrooms of Delhi Public School, Noida, wondering when the last time I actually visited a dentist was. Sitting on one of the chairs, I was actually cursing Ogden Nash for his poem This is going to hurt just a little bit. Much has changed since then save the answer to that. I still don’t remember when the last time was, but I’m sure it wasn’t one which I’d have liked to remember. But let’s not go there. Some other time, maybe. For now:


This Is Going To Hurt Just A Little Bit

One thing I like less than most things is sitting

in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.

And that I will never have to do it again is a hope

that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,

But the one that is both is dental.


It is hard to be self-possessed

With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm

When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line

or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity

When you know your position is one of the two or

three in lifemost lacking in dignity.


And your mouth is like a section of road that

is being worked on.

And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and

concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there

isn't a nerve in your head that you aren't being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.

And others have things done to their gums,

And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,

But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.


And the circumstance that adds most to your terror

Is that it's all done with a mirror,

Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans

used to say, only they were referring to a feminine

bear when they said it, an ursa,

But all the same how can you be sure when he takes

his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he

won't get mixed up, the way you do when you try to

tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and

forget that left is right and vice versa?

 

And then at last he says That will be all;

but it isn't because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof

With something that I suspect is generally

used to put a shine on a horse's hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it's all over now

and afterall it was only this once.

And he says come back in three monce.

 

And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious

circle that thou ever sentest,

That Man has to go continually to the dentist

to keep his teeth in good condition when the chief

reason he wants his teeth in good condition is so that

he won't have to go to the dentist.