A Unique Species called Dentists (in Chennai)
For a city with a perennial sweet tooth, dentistry obviously is a thriving business in Chennai. I have had my share of dentists and am currently under the care of one of them. My tryst with dentists started rather young, when a dentist friend of my father pulled out one of my tooth when I had gone with the patient only to see how a dentist place looks. Since then, dentists for me means, deception, fear and a visit to an unique species.
The dentists I have visted since then have done little to alter my opinion (except the most recent one who looks like a tooth paste salesman and I could hardly believe that he was a dentist untill he started to have a go on my tooth and I felt his sensitive dexterity rather surprising).
There was one very popular doctor whom I visted during my late teens, he also doubled up as a professor and started to conduct a class with my teeth to a group of students, it was the most embarassing time I have had on a dentist chair, imagine a group of good looking women and snubby looking guys of not more than one’s own age looking down your mouth, eeeekkk! Even today the memory rattles! …this man considered himself to be rather stlylist too and threw his instruments in the air, caught them and then inserted it into your mouth not knowing the kind of suspicion about him it created in my mind despite all his high credentials! I left him that day never to return.
Then there was the fantastic days with the actor, vitage car collector and also a dentist. Located in the centre of the city, this stylish dentist is extremely costly and was one of the earliest ones to accept payments from his patrons (many of them cine actors and actresses) through credit cards. I had to leave him due to his bills and threats from my credit card company!
Then there was the more lady dentist in a more humble locality, only she too closely resembled image of rakshasis I had seen surrounding Sita in Asokavanam in an illustrated Ramayana I had read during school days. I left her without even sitting in her chair ones’ with vague noises of having forgotten my teeth at home.
There was this other dentists in a large individual builing in central chennai, there were two of them and they both had the same name, I sat in their reception trying to guess whether they were brothers or father and son team…never found out, it looked like it would rain which for my already high strung mind was a bad omen for a recon with the dentist, so I left the place.
Amidst all this were the occassional bouncing on a dentist on social gatherings, there was one whom I met with my cousin in a bus stand once, he promised with a (what my highly juandiced eyes percieved as) gleeful look that, he would take a ‘very good care’ of my teeth if I would visit him in his clinic and gave me his phone number, I eagerly lost it. Then there was this recent encounter with another one in an academic instiution, he had big teeth (why do dentist have such big teeth??) and kept trying to stare at my teeth (or atleast that is what I thought ever since I got to know that he had done dentistry before entering academia).
You can say that I have had my share of dentists…all the dentist houses share some unique qualities:
1. they have the most un-readable magazines all out dated by at least 6 months stacked up in their outer office
2. many have prominent display in their reception of how to brush your teeth, apart from serving as an absolute intimidation tactic on the would-be patients and putting them on the defensive, it also scares the hell out of you as the poster also describes various un-mentionable things that will happen to you if you were not to follow the proper brushing instructions
3. most of them have a very sleepy attendant at the outer office who is trained to look down upon you…I have also seen this in some clinics, but, it is nowhere seen better than with the dentists, he seems to have a moral high ground because he works for a dentist while we poor mortals are only her patients
Toothfully yours…
08/09/2006
The dentists I have visted since then have done little to alter my opinion (except the most recent one who looks like a tooth paste salesman and I could hardly believe that he was a dentist untill he started to have a go on my tooth and I felt his sensitive dexterity rather surprising).
There was one very popular doctor whom I visted during my late teens, he also doubled up as a professor and started to conduct a class with my teeth to a group of students, it was the most embarassing time I have had on a dentist chair, imagine a group of good looking women and snubby looking guys of not more than one’s own age looking down your mouth, eeeekkk! Even today the memory rattles! …this man considered himself to be rather stlylist too and threw his instruments in the air, caught them and then inserted it into your mouth not knowing the kind of suspicion about him it created in my mind despite all his high credentials! I left him that day never to return.
Then there was the fantastic days with the actor, vitage car collector and also a dentist. Located in the centre of the city, this stylish dentist is extremely costly and was one of the earliest ones to accept payments from his patrons (many of them cine actors and actresses) through credit cards. I had to leave him due to his bills and threats from my credit card company!
Then there was the more lady dentist in a more humble locality, only she too closely resembled image of rakshasis I had seen surrounding Sita in Asokavanam in an illustrated Ramayana I had read during school days. I left her without even sitting in her chair ones’ with vague noises of having forgotten my teeth at home.
There was this other dentists in a large individual builing in central chennai, there were two of them and they both had the same name, I sat in their reception trying to guess whether they were brothers or father and son team…never found out, it looked like it would rain which for my already high strung mind was a bad omen for a recon with the dentist, so I left the place.
Amidst all this were the occassional bouncing on a dentist on social gatherings, there was one whom I met with my cousin in a bus stand once, he promised with a (what my highly juandiced eyes percieved as) gleeful look that, he would take a ‘very good care’ of my teeth if I would visit him in his clinic and gave me his phone number, I eagerly lost it. Then there was this recent encounter with another one in an academic instiution, he had big teeth (why do dentist have such big teeth??) and kept trying to stare at my teeth (or atleast that is what I thought ever since I got to know that he had done dentistry before entering academia).
You can say that I have had my share of dentists…all the dentist houses share some unique qualities:
1. they have the most un-readable magazines all out dated by at least 6 months stacked up in their outer office
2. many have prominent display in their reception of how to brush your teeth, apart from serving as an absolute intimidation tactic on the would-be patients and putting them on the defensive, it also scares the hell out of you as the poster also describes various un-mentionable things that will happen to you if you were not to follow the proper brushing instructions
3. most of them have a very sleepy attendant at the outer office who is trained to look down upon you…I have also seen this in some clinics, but, it is nowhere seen better than with the dentists, he seems to have a moral high ground because he works for a dentist while we poor mortals are only her patients
Toothfully yours…
08/09/2006
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