It was about six in the evening. There was a long queue at the dentist next door, so I trotted along to find another one. On the main road, over the neon lights were drab under hangs of torn saris and petticoats. A dark and skinny woman was mopping the portico which supported a corroded white board; beside the blue cross, in red Arial font, the words ‘Dentist’ were written across. The clinic was in the first floor, and the rice mill owners had laid down rice bags for sampling on the stair case. The railing on the stair case was broken at the bends and hanged like tongues of scarecrows. Water from a house overflew onto the greasy stairs; soap foams puddled up and floated along to meet my feet. On the ground floor, a pregnant woman was heavily running after an infant who beat his feet on the ground to show his denial about everything under the sun. On the first floor, a plastic mug found itself under the running tap and scattered a stream of water across in my direction. In a fitful attempt to escape the uncalled for shower bearing the thought of soft rubber slippers that separated me from the foamy slippery floor, I proceeded with caution.
I squeezed myself through the narrow pathway frequented by three doors to the right; to the left was a parapet wall that kissed the length of my shins. From the second door, a shiny hand slipped between the curtains and dragged a burka clad woman along with it. Furtively, my eyes followed her as she went towards the stairs. On her way, she slipped her long manicured fingers into the hand bag that was tucked tight in the arm pit, pulled out a small mirror and wet her lips with the index finger running along the belly of her lips. Carefully, she gathered her burka into folds and held by the knees to cross the foamy pools of soap water. Her exposed ankles sported violet jewelled hem of her dress; a garland embroidery work was tinselled with eye shaped pearls that hung loose and were tapping against her gleaming skin as she took every measured step.
At the entrance of the clinic, a man in brown trousers and a chequered shirt was sweeping the floor. With a mat in his hand, he glanced vaguely in my direction. I barely muttered ‘dentist’ and the man pointed to a row of empty chairs. Inside, patches of recently cemented areas were covered with old paper calendars. Some of them were as old as ten years; the dates were smudged with age. Withered calendars stately flaunted half or three-quarters of a month; rest was lying in dustbins. Posters of healthy teeth juxtaposed that of bleeding gums; I was the only patient in the waiting room and I wondered if there was any one inside at all. Presently, the man in brown trousers greeted and beckoned me to enter the room whose door had lost its handle; two deep holes now remained as a sad remnant of the handle. Flinging a white apron over the chequered shirt, he made me lie over the grey leather cushioned table.
His eyes were shallow and he wore a thick moustache that covered the upper lip plentifully. A yellow table lamp drooped by his side; the desk was littered with tablets and tonic bottles. One bottle had a kangaroo picture from which the dentist gulped down two lid fulls; he lowered his owl shaped glasses, dug out a stethoscope that was bleeding blue ink and proceeded towards me. Upon my apprising, he noticed the stethoscope and uttered a word of thanks or regrets (I can’t recall which of the two). The table drawer was jammed in its chest; the dentist whisked it to one side and other to force it out. While he emptied the contents of the drawer on the table, the room shut itself in the dark. The power outage gave me time to think; I considered the awkward attempt of slipping out into the dark waiting room discreetly, then to the soapy staircase along the narrow portico, and to merge in the dark streets downstairs. Time was running out, I had to act before the power was restored.
Two minutes later, lacking the will to follow through the sharp intuition, with my fists curled up and nerves taut, I turned to my smart phone for courage.
“Ah! You are a saviour. Can I borrow your phone light for a moment?”
He made me point to one end of the room. It had not caught my eye before; on the corner was a generator that was evidently used to dry the dentist’s towels. At this point, my tentativeness buckled in the favour of running home. The dentist crouched effortlessly before the machine; turned the knob clockwise to fire the machine in vain. Shook it by its neck and after a moment of silence, declared it dead.
“Oh! Dear. Not again. I forgot to refuel it”
With my smart phone’s aid, the dentist rummaged through the emptied contents of table drawers for a candle; through the rubble of used syringes and ointment tubes, he ran his owlish eyes and found the nub of a used candle. On a metal tin container’s lid, the candle melted into a squiggly heap of wax and the dentist patiently explained to me that it takes a virtuoso like him to cut through the heap and locate the wick. Locate he did; with a pair of scissors from the tray that was laid out by the dentist table.
In the candle light, unnoticed by the dentist, I nipped at the exposed sponge of the leather cushions. In this posture, with my head rested on the cracked head rest, I could see the tray placed before me. Two brown hair follicles rose up like a terminator machine dragging a cockroach head beneath them. Cocking its head and swaying its antennas, the roach genuflected before me; stately, it withdrew stepping over the drills, probes and excavators on the tray. Fear and disgust overwhelmed my conscience; I started towards the door.
“You know! In my profession, one tends to get attached to some or the other instrument”
This was the talk to gain acquaintance. One last step and I would have breathed a sigh of relief. It’s a pity the door won’t budge; you see! it had no handle. And I wondered if the dentist was disingenuous – what a clever roguish attempt to confine me.
“These walls cannot contain me.” I bethought like a knight with his head propped in the beheading altar.
He was presently peering through the glass windows; tranquil streets outside metamorphosed into the rambunctious college days of his past. Stepping aboard his train of thought, he recounted the glory days of his life. The man was apparently a class topper; the field of dentistry affected him on a psychological level. The day his palms felt the cold touch of forceps, his gaze fell upon the girl with tresses. On a visceral subconscious level, he explained to me, the use of forceps had associated itself with his infatuation with the girl. She wound her curly hair into ringlets when she was in a meditative mood; let a thin smile escape her plum lips as a greeting when she faced him in the corridor; and hid the glow of her pink cheeks in a frail scarf. On one particular occasion, he followed her home; waited outside the apartment as she disappeared into the flood of parking lot to reappear in the balcony of first floor. He conveniently lodged himself in a coffee shop outside and spent weeks nurturing his fantasy. The tea shop owner, an unruly man with a bad mouth allowed the tale to develop before his eyes.
From this vantage point, he witnessed the mellifluous charm of her evening breeze unsettle the silent waters of his conscience. Every night he returned home with the memories of - her absorbed gaze on the dry clothes as she unpinned them one by one; or how her melodious tone escaped the first floor windows and swooped downstairs to settle on sparrows and marigolds. The poor college boy stayed there until the crimson pole lamps mischievously turned the colour of his clothes into something more glowing and cheerful.
And the power was restored. Light from the 200 watt tube light burned my retina for a second too longer; the quiet moment dawned on me the awkward position I was in.
The dentist stepped away from the broken window sash; a potbellied lizard flopped to the floor with a muffled thud as he shut the window. He moved closer to me now; I realised from the deep look of his eyes that an air of reluctance had caught him and he required my consent to chart the long trails of his romantic past. I dropped my eyes like a pet dog that wishes its master to run his fingers around its ears. The dentist sat on the swivelling chair, grabbed the forceps, forced my lips apart, and surveyed the gums with the probe on which only a moment ago, two antennae had snivelled their way through. With my head presently pointed to the roof, I had the occasion to count the white washed patches, spider webs and the pale brown flakes that were about to chip away and drop into my benevolently opened mouth.
“A wisdom tooth is forking open your gums on the left. And, you seem to abuse your teeth on the left by grinding them to death. Don’t you ever chew on the right side?”
I lapped my tongue helplessly. “Oh!” the dentist noted “let me remove the clamps so you can speak”
Disinterested and melancholic - perhaps his past had troubled him – he scribbled with his back to me. This posture gave me an opportunity to devour the details of the room; on the hanger were a pair of socks torn at the bend and toe area, a faded Kurt Cobain t-shirt, and two blue shrunken jockey underwear. In the cupboard behind me were bottled teeth, a two rupee clinic plus sachet that was leaking blue viscous paste; on the top shelf was a framed photograph of an attractive woman in her teens. The woman had a hanky clutched in her tight palm, she was standing by an open window and on the stool beside her was a burka. The photo was old, its age showing with a brownish tinge; pale cracks had invaded it from every corner. The frame had mango shaped knots carved on the sides, one of which was broken. On close observation, I noticed, through the window by her side, a glimpse of the tea shop downstairs and a thin boned teenage dentist in flat pleated belly bottom trousers. He was daintily unbuttoning the top button of the maroon coloured long sleeves’ shirt when the photo was captured.
Handing over the prescription, the dentist spoke in a sorrowful tone “your tooth will have to be extracted. I have prescribed a couple of local anaesthetics. You can buy them at the dispensary in the next lane.” Clearing his throat and scratching his thigh, he continued “oh! and do buy the syringes while you are at it. Will you!”
He walked me to the door, grabbed the handle-less door with his forceps that a moment ago were inside my mouth and earlier to that hosted two antennae. The door opened sweeping away the litter of used syringes behind it. To counter my bemused expression as I prepared myself to bid farewell, he explained “under normal circumstances, a dentist has stock of anaesthetic and syringes. But as you can see, I have run out of them. I was busy”
I had made up my mind to never return. But the nagging curiosity pained me and I enquired as to how his romantic past turned out at the end.
One pleasant evening like any other, she stepped out of the apartment later in the night. She had slipped into a shift; in moonlight, the folds of garment undulated before her with every step. In a hideous mood, the teenage dentist dug himself into the tea shop. The silk garment lolloped around her like streams of milk descending from the shoulder straps, over the summit of her bosom, to the ankles. Tucking a strand of hair around the curve of her right ear, she impatiently waited outside with her arms crossed before her. There was nothing to it but step out; and step out the teenage dentist did.
“She stood there like a pole, never said a word. She fled the scene before I recovered from the shock. It all happened so fast.”
“Days turned into weeks and she was nowhere to be found; her family had left the town. She dropped out of the med school; her whereabouts were impossible to gain, and I trained myself to consider her slip from my life like a silk thread from the naked palms.”
In a state of confusion, I nodded my head knowingly; but stood my ground like a child who had been denied the climax of a thrilling story.
The dentist cleared his throat for a second time. “Two years later, I found her. It was as if we were never separated. We continued from where we left. That was ten years ago. Where I used to wait under the shade of a tea shop’s roof, now I have leased the room next door to hers. ”
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