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The first toothless tiger I saw was my grannie. She was already into her sixties when I was born. She had lost all her teeth by then. She was a clean-shaven greying widow always wearing a saffron sari that covered her head and bosom in one swell wraparound. I guess they wore what were called 8-yard saris unlike the 6-yard ones that youngsters wore. She was an authority on the Telugu Bhagavatam and could recite hundreds of poems. And she had a booming voice that could be heard two lanes away and she wasn't afraid of using it. She may have lost her teeth but not her gums which served well the purpose of chewing our well-cooked veggie food. And she relished it. And she loved cashew nuts but couldn't crack them with her gums. So, she would break them into tiny bits and pieces in her mortar and pestle and keep the nutties in her cheeks for hours together. That was her addiction and it gave her her daily high.
She never visited even a quack dentist. I don't know how she managed to lose all her teeth.
Father never lost a single tooth nor complained of toothache till he died at 80.
Mom was different. I knew her with all her teeth intact till she was into her 30s. Then on she developed a rare quirk. Within minutes of her dropping asleep, we could hear her grind her teeth. And we would all gather around her during her afternoon siestas and listen to the milling sounds. Of course we never disturbed her. Maybe there was some Freudian explanation for her tooth-grinding. Father must have been her target...she was the first feminist in our family...she had every reason to grind him to bits...she gave him six daughters and a son amid a few miscarriages before she was 33 and lost her fertility happily.
By the time mom entered her seventies she had lost all her teeth...she ground them to pulp and dust. She too never visited a dentist nor complained of toothache. She is now 90+ and enjoys her food like her mom-in-law I talked about above.
I don't recall growing my milk-teeth...unlike Salvador Dali who claimed he remembered what it was like to be in the womb (if not before that). But I vividly recall losing my first milk tooth. We were village folks unaware of tooth fairies. But Father consoled me and kept my fallen tooth wrapped in a paper on the attic. And promised that a new one would soon appear if I stopped crying and be a good boy.
Losing tooth recalls an incident at IIT KGP that my friend was a witness to. He had a colleague Dr P in his Dept who was known to be a kanjoos and kept his money in secret nooks and corners to hoodwink the rampant thieves and burglars that the campus was then riddled with. One morning Dr P was visiting my friend who gave him a cup of coffee. Midway, he went to the window and returned. And my friend was curious if anything went wrong but Dr P assured him:
"My wisdom tooth which was loose fell down into the cup and I picked it up and flicked it away"
And he finished the rest of the coffee as if nothing serious happened.
Father gave me very strong teeth but I took to chain-smoking during my long bachelorhood. That made my teeth turn first yellow and then tartar-blackish here and there. And when I decided to marry and had to appear in matrimonial interviews, I visited the only dentist available in Gole Bazaar who examined my offending teeth and said that they were covered with what he called plaque. And he took a pen-knife and tried to rip it off, with limited success.
It was in my early fifties that I knew what true-blue toothache was. I had to visit the latest dentist in the Janata Market who looked very professional except that he was chewing zarda paan relentlessly and had offending teeth that stank. But, as they say, what does the color of the cat matter as long as it catches mice. He prescribed an antibiotic and knocked off my 4 wisdom teeth and suggested that I gargle my mouth with Hexidine which I do till now. Bit by bit then on my front upper teeth started wearing out and dropping down, to the merriment of Ishani.
My son doesn't smoke nor drink no chew paan. Yet, by his twenties he started complaining of cavities and broken teeth. He is a Project Manager and so doesn't believe in short cuts. When he visited the posh dentist here six months ago, he was advised to get a couple of cavities filled, two unwisdom teeth ejected, and a broken one 'crowned' with a zirconium top.
The bill came to Rs 12,000.
But all his cavities are back and the jewel in the crown vanished like those flakes of snow...
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Some old women and men grow bitter with age; the more their teeth drop out, the more biting they get.
~George D. Prentice
~George D. Prentice
The first toothless tiger I saw was my grannie. She was already into her sixties when I was born. She had lost all her teeth by then. She was a clean-shaven greying widow always wearing a saffron sari that covered her head and bosom in one swell wraparound. I guess they wore what were called 8-yard saris unlike the 6-yard ones that youngsters wore. She was an authority on the Telugu Bhagavatam and could recite hundreds of poems. And she had a booming voice that could be heard two lanes away and she wasn't afraid of using it. She may have lost her teeth but not her gums which served well the purpose of chewing our well-cooked veggie food. And she relished it. And she loved cashew nuts but couldn't crack them with her gums. So, she would break them into tiny bits and pieces in her mortar and pestle and keep the nutties in her cheeks for hours together. That was her addiction and it gave her her daily high.
She never visited even a quack dentist. I don't know how she managed to lose all her teeth.
Father never lost a single tooth nor complained of toothache till he died at 80.
Mom was different. I knew her with all her teeth intact till she was into her 30s. Then on she developed a rare quirk. Within minutes of her dropping asleep, we could hear her grind her teeth. And we would all gather around her during her afternoon siestas and listen to the milling sounds. Of course we never disturbed her. Maybe there was some Freudian explanation for her tooth-grinding. Father must have been her target...she was the first feminist in our family...she had every reason to grind him to bits...she gave him six daughters and a son amid a few miscarriages before she was 33 and lost her fertility happily.
By the time mom entered her seventies she had lost all her teeth...she ground them to pulp and dust. She too never visited a dentist nor complained of toothache. She is now 90+ and enjoys her food like her mom-in-law I talked about above.
I don't recall growing my milk-teeth...unlike Salvador Dali who claimed he remembered what it was like to be in the womb (if not before that). But I vividly recall losing my first milk tooth. We were village folks unaware of tooth fairies. But Father consoled me and kept my fallen tooth wrapped in a paper on the attic. And promised that a new one would soon appear if I stopped crying and be a good boy.
Losing tooth recalls an incident at IIT KGP that my friend was a witness to. He had a colleague Dr P in his Dept who was known to be a kanjoos and kept his money in secret nooks and corners to hoodwink the rampant thieves and burglars that the campus was then riddled with. One morning Dr P was visiting my friend who gave him a cup of coffee. Midway, he went to the window and returned. And my friend was curious if anything went wrong but Dr P assured him:
"My wisdom tooth which was loose fell down into the cup and I picked it up and flicked it away"
And he finished the rest of the coffee as if nothing serious happened.
Father gave me very strong teeth but I took to chain-smoking during my long bachelorhood. That made my teeth turn first yellow and then tartar-blackish here and there. And when I decided to marry and had to appear in matrimonial interviews, I visited the only dentist available in Gole Bazaar who examined my offending teeth and said that they were covered with what he called plaque. And he took a pen-knife and tried to rip it off, with limited success.
It was in my early fifties that I knew what true-blue toothache was. I had to visit the latest dentist in the Janata Market who looked very professional except that he was chewing zarda paan relentlessly and had offending teeth that stank. But, as they say, what does the color of the cat matter as long as it catches mice. He prescribed an antibiotic and knocked off my 4 wisdom teeth and suggested that I gargle my mouth with Hexidine which I do till now. Bit by bit then on my front upper teeth started wearing out and dropping down, to the merriment of Ishani.
My son doesn't smoke nor drink no chew paan. Yet, by his twenties he started complaining of cavities and broken teeth. He is a Project Manager and so doesn't believe in short cuts. When he visited the posh dentist here six months ago, he was advised to get a couple of cavities filled, two unwisdom teeth ejected, and a broken one 'crowned' with a zirconium top.
The bill came to Rs 12,000.
But all his cavities are back and the jewel in the crown vanished like those flakes of snow...
************************************************************************************************************
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