On Matters Dental and Oral

To Pu Di,

for whose woe this was meant solace.

*

Having a dental problem can be such a gas!

I got it all of a sudden. It was alright at first, nothing more than an itchy throat. Something you get every now and then, you know, just another passing spell of dry, itchy throat trouble. Of course, eating and drinking became difficult and the phone was given a break, but it was alright more or less. Just the usual throat trouble. Nothing to worry about.

That was when my gums started inflating.

Inflating, yes, inflating – that’s pretty much the word. Today they’re alright and I go to sleep a human; the next morning I wake up a primate of some sort with gums all over my teeth. Everything before that had been child’s play. That was when my troubles really started.

Seriously, you can’t eat, you can’t drink, you can’t do anything at all, just wallow about in silent misery. Every drop of water, each and every morsel of food, the smallest, simplest word, all of these became herculean as the throat dried up and the gums swelled to the size of raisins, effectively rendering eating, drinking and speaking, tasks essential to human survival and society, impossible. You can’t but think of old Coleridge in spots like this, so much to eat, so much to drink and ever so much to speak, but absolutely naught to be done. Quite absurdly existential if you know what I mean, so much to do yet nothing to be had, nothing to be done...

Except bleed. Oh yes, didn’t I say there was blood involved? There was.

Lots. The slightest pressure and the gums would start leaking like a sponge. This meant that every bite of food, every drop of drink was laced for days on end with blood – and not just healthy, clean blood, but stale, sickly blood. In mornings, I would wake up to find my mouth full of blood, my teeth stained with infected fluid that had leaked during the night. I’d brush and in no time toothpaste would turn a ghastly yellow-red. At times the dams would burst just while talking so that slowly my lips would turn red and the onlookers balk at the sight. Vampiric? More like having periods rather, in this case up in the mouth.

Of course there was medication. And, of course, there was the dentist.

That wasn’t too bad though. The experience, still, was something. We waited, the mater and I, as Tendulkar missed his century by the proverbial whisker. It was my first serious visit to the dentist and my head was full of countless stories and anecdotes of the masked torture that’s extracted behind the genteel veneer of a respectable dental establishment. The man came in after a while, extracted from his own chair at home by the call to duty. I was ushered into the chair and as the mater took charge and put some chips on the block, I took a look at the habitat. Clean, yes, and what with the zillion models of jaws and teeth of all sorts somewhat grotesque too. The chair itself was an assortment of countless this and that, a basin here, a lamp there and all sorts of shiny, pointy things tucked away neatly on and in handy slots and trays. It was just as soon as I was done taking it all in that he prodded me back on the chair and, asking me to open my mouth wide, took one of these little devils and put it in before I could resist.

Bang it went, straight on to my poor gums with a vengeance. Burst they went, leaking blood in a free fall.

Not too bad, I agree. I’d expected worse and I got off easy, but it was something. The dentist’s trade is like that, I suppose: a profession where the unexpected is to be expected but never really is, there being such a range of horrors to expect. You expect a clean-up, you get a root canal. That’s how dentistry works, I suppose. I had expected all sorts of horrors, all sorts of unimaginable manoeuvres in my oral cavity; I got off with a minor shock and some blood loss. Not too bad, not too bad...

Except that the next time I went there he warned my gums would have to be cut.

Needless to say I never went back. Such is the will of man, he’ll nurse himself out of all ill health and sickness and be fighting fit in due course of time. Of course, supposedly I’m on a sensitive toothbrush routine for life now, but all said and done the gum is out of the gums and all is back to normal.

On Caste

I don’t think caste is such a bad thing. Of course, it’s problematic to say so, not the least because the very idiom in which we talk of caste and caste based discrimination is replete with connotations of derogation and extremism, but still, fact remains that caste based discrimination, both as a concept and as a social reality, is nuanced way beyond the narrow confines of the general understanding of the matter.

How? Well, first of all, discrimination in itself: what is so bad, so hugely taboo about discrimination? Like all others, the word means many things, some of them all at once at the same time. To argue that discriminate connotes discretion is, of course, not to argue in favour of caste based discrimination as we generally understand it to be, but it is still to add a spectrum of possibilities to the word, the process – and these not necessarily adverse to any particular person or persons’ welfare and well being. After all, discrimination, with all its paraphernalia of functionality and utility, with the implied sense of order and structure, is the foundational premise of nature and of humanity; not just this, discrimination is also the premise of equality, not just the cause which makes it desirable but also the basis on which it is conceived and organised – for, again, what is equality without an order, a structure, and how may these be had sans discrimination?

To argue that discrimination per se is bad, to talk thus in black and white, is then to be naively in the mould of the post-enlightenment, rationalised and so-called progressive realm of social aspiration, a discourse which has provided millions much food for thought and which continues, hypothetically at least, as the end of much of human activity today. Within this discourse equality and equity stand strong as the operative concepts which, though consistently interpreted differently, have yet inspired much idealism and fervour over the last two hundred or so years and still continue to be the stuff dreams of countless well-meaning, make-it-a-better-world people’s dreams are made of. Discrimination, being one of those things one likes to associate with feudalism and all that was, is and could be bad with humanity, naturally finds no place in the overall schemata of these dreams.

Yet, dreams too require a certain amount of discrimination; or, to put it otherwise, the stuff such equity-equality utopian dreams are made of too involves discrimination at some level. That level, indeed, may be such that causes the least possible discomfort or inconvenience to the least number of people, but the fact would remain that at the semantic level, it would be discrimination still.

Which, in short, is my point about caste based discrimination: when I say it’s not too bad, instead of referring to the active prejudice and handicap which it imposes and in a way necessitates, I think of its import, of what it means and has meant as a concept and as a way of life to all of us who are Hindu or of Hindu origin. I think of caste as a cultural artefact that has been the marker of so many of our Hindustani people’s identity.

This is where it gets tricky and, of course, subjective. I can say caste is not so bad because my baggage is not a bit as heavy as of those who’ve been at the receiving end. Of course, that it’s not and that I can think of caste without my blood boiling at the oppression enforced upon zillions has got something to do with both my placement in the hierarchy and my own inclinations, but that still doesn’t take away from the fact that my subjective opinion on and experience of the matter, presented so and not in any way claimed otherwise, is of note. Not, indeed, as of those who wish to end oppression and who in acting tangibly and working for the so-called greater good needs must couch their subjectivity on the matter in the objective idiom of the post-enlightenment and blah-blah society, as of one who, given a certain origin and placement, can afford to be against such discrimination as curtails the making available of equal opportunities to all and still not dismiss caste and caste based discrimination, having in doing so a certain nostalgia for those nuances of caste which make up one’s identity as both an individual and a community.

Yes, a certain nostalgia for caste.

Why not? The experiences of those who’ve suffered apparently and tangibly, though infinitely more worthy of comment when empowering the marginalised and considering programmes for social justice, cannot totally make redundant the experiences of those who have not to the same degree and manner. Which is why if I feel caste in the Hindu and Hindu origin context has a certain cultural capital and that the memories we have of ourselves as castes are endangered by discourses which completely seek to do away with it, then I have as much of a right to feel so as someone who, like me, is against caste based discrimination and who, unlike me, feels caste as a basis for social organisation, as a concept, as a memory, should be erased from our cultural consciousness for good. Indeed, I will perhaps be more justified in saying that. For starters, the ills of the past cannot be wished away and then, even if we were to somehow forget them, we cannot forget that evil for one is not evil for all. Not evil for all, yes, but also not evil in the way that makes evil subjective in a typical oppressor-oppressed relationship.

Which, ultimately, is my point on caste and caste based discrimination. It’s an evil and by far not a necessary evil; yet it is part of those forces which make so many of us what we are and being so, it constitutes an undeniably important part of our identities. Besides this, and which is a bit more important to me here, it provides the basis for so many of our cultural artefacts, particularly intangible artefacts which, as stories, anecdotes and proverbs, are threatened by the zealous condemnation of all those in favour of a caste free cultural consciousness. To condemn and work against active discrimination is all very right and proper; to negate the centrality of the cultural background of such discrimination too is important. But to totally deny and to wish to fully erase the memory of all is, in the final analysis, not just redundant – after all, if we don’t remember what our equality has been achieved against, then the achievement won’t seem worth half the effort – but also dangerously unfair to the rights of those who think otherwise.\

Which is why I say caste is not such a bad thing at all.

Zapak!

The hunt is not for everyone. Patience, grit, perseverance...the hunt exacts a heavy toll, a price that must be paid, paid in blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. It curdles the blood, turns the heart to stone. Life and death in the balance, existence a matter of poise, of accuracy and skill: hit, and so ends life in a flash of smoke and putrid blood; miss, and pay the price of blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. Patience becomes pain, eyes strained for the slightest movement, ears geared for the tiniest buzz. The sands of time flow by, time itself ceases to exist, but not the hunter: ever aware, ever alive, poised between life and death, the hunt goes on till the lust be satiated, the lust for blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. Bait, bait becomes blood. Blood turns blood, blood flows, flows from being to being, hunt to hunt, till hunter and hunted are as one, are one...the bait, the baited: blood.


The hunt is not for everyone. Through the dark, dense deep, each step wary of the next, each shadow a lurking danger, softly on to danger, death, blood.

The hunt is not for everyone...zaak! zrr! puff...psss...zapak!

A Modest Appeal

To

The Prime Minister,

the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,

the Ministers of Home, Law and Minority Affairs,

the Ladies and Gentlemen of the Parliament

and

other relevant Powers of this Mighty Potentate:

A Modest Appeal

for

the Preservation of the Rights

and

the Continuance of the Welfare

of

the Most Noble, Most Ancient, Most Remarkably Genteel

Kayasth Community.

It been established that reservation in public life is the only medium to ensure the free and fair existence of any tribe, sect, group or community in this free and fair land of ours; and it been further irrefutably proved by a series of demagogues, statesmen, their cronies and sundry other types of noble hanger-ons that all minority communities needs must be protected from victimisation, marginalisation and politicisation by unscrupulous elements within the overall not-so-scrupulous majority, allow me, most humbly, to present the most befitting and tragic case of the most deserving and wronged community in this community that we communally call India: the Kayasths.

The Kayasths, sirs, are no ordinary people: for long victim to the scorn and apathy of their fellow countrymen, the Kayasths’ story is one of alienation and grief. Like other castes and communities, we too were discriminated against on the basis of our occupation so that with time as we got more and more proficient in our hereditary employments, the cumulated scorn and jealousy of the masses ossified into a systematic, malicious, programmatic bias against our people and the offices they performed. Generation after generation was inculcated with certain prejudices adverse to our welfare as a social and sociable community and thus, in spite of all our efforts, we became victims to communal discrimination.

It is this bias, noble sirs, that I seek to redress through the powers vested in your august offices by the commonwealth at large. You hold with you the power to make or mar and in presenting the historical woes of this most victimised and most tragically ostracised community, I cannot but hope that your hearts and souls will be moved to pity and compassion and that you will at once set the wheels in motion towards granting our people reservation in public life – in government jobs, in the armed forces, in schools and colleges as both staff and students and in all other state sponsored enterprises. While doing so, missives to the private sector, to the captains of our shinning industry, on keeping the plight of our people in mind will be highly laudable.

I must, most highly revered sirs, iterate once more the urgency of this task. We suffer under the weight of long standing historical prejudice and require immediate remedial measures to alleviate somewhat the strain of our great sorrow. As democratically appointed representatives of a secular welfare state, it is your sacred duty to administer justice to the wronged and so, in such cases where the wrong stretch past millennia, it becomes all the more necessary to let no moment pass in idleness when the mute cries of a long oppressed and victimised people call out for equity and freedom. Be rest assured, noble sirs, that we shall not hesitate in breaking the bonds of restraint and joining all our other victimised compatriots in cathartically vandalising state and private property and in general making life hell should our just and reasonable demands not be redressed with a suitable and befitting scheme.

Hoping that all I have said here will find favour with your noble eminences and that the most befitting case of our most unjustly wronged community find the redressal it seeks so deservedly,

Your most faithful servant,

A Conscientious Kayasth.

On visiting the Mughal Garden

A visit to the Mughal Garden is instructive in very many ways. There is, first of all, the…but wait. What is the Mughal Garden?

Well, for the uninitiated, the Mughal Garden is, um, a garden in India’s Rashtrapati’s Presidential Estate. It’s Mughal not because the Mughals built it, of course not, but because it’s structured on the archetype of the gardens they used to. Why? Well, first, because those gardens them Mughals built were really pretty and exquisite, just the place you’d want in your blooming big estate and second because, well, the British being British, they couldn’t resist the charm of incorporating something of their predecessors in Hindustan into their own topos of power and so they built a garden to suit English tastes in the Mughal style. You know, just like the empire’s here to stay, the sun never sets and so on? Well, exactly like that: the Mughals thought they were here to stay, but oh no, we are going to stay and look, we can even build better and bigger than them, so a hearty hurrah to us and the crown!

Ah well, didn’t exactly turn out that way and in less than two decades of its being built the British were out and, well, let’s say, the Indians were in, but that being that, back now to the Garden. More properly, a visit to the Garden. Instructive, in very many ways. Here’s how.

First, if you visit on a Sunday, you can put yourself off for a dumb mutt. No, seriously, I think Sunday’s the worst possible day to go to the place. The entrance is from Gate 35 of the Presidential Estate and the line extended half a kilometre or so to Gate 38 on one side and around four hundred metres up North Avenue on the other. This for starters, for a hundred metres or so from the gate the drive in had been enclosed and barricaded with stalls for depositing your stuff on one side and narrow aisles for entrance on the other. Announcements repeatedly asked visitors to deposit all their belongings before stepping up to the entrance and extolled every now and then so and so from such and such unheard of town from this and that part of the subcontinent to please, please come in through the metal detectors because their family had been frantically waiting for them the past half an hour and now they were all getting hysterical.

Yes, quite the mela. We’re all quite capable of that, anywhere, anytime.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against melas and crowds – I mean, isn’t the exotic Indian experience all about that? No, no, I’m all for them and stuff of this sort, oh yes I am. However, sometimes, it’s just that it gets a wee bit too much, and some places perhaps are meant to be without the milling, maddening crowd.

The Mughal Garden is such a one.

Oh yes, very bad; very, very bad. But one really can’t help it. Democracy’s so bad for beauty.

Think about it. How many monuments or cultural artefacts adjudged beautiful or worth preservation have been the result of fair and equitable systems of labour and economic production? I, well, I for one can’t really think of any right now, not as much because democracies all around haven’t erected monuments to their glory but because there really hasn’t been a system of labour and blah-blah-blah which has been really, seriously fair to all possible stakeholders. I suppose it’s a bit like that old dialectic our sociologists and cultural critics so used to love, of there always being someone who gets the hard end of a bargain, of beauty being so not because of itself but because of it’s polar extreme, ugliness, which makes a comparison possible. Those who enjoy are beautiful, those who labour ugly…

And it there, in that garden, it was pretty ugly.

Not, of course, that there was no enjoyment, no, but whatever there was was of that closely supervised, guarded type which allots you only as much time for a glimpse or so after which you needs must move on because logistics demand so. The crowd management was pretty good, but a crowd it was nonetheless and for the life of me I can’t imagine how one enjoys a garden in, as a crowd.

Aren’t gardens supposed to be taken in? Aren’t you supposed to stand there, sit, look in the distance, admire the myriad hues of spring, ruminate on the might of the fallen empire, walk barefoot on the lush green grass and run your hand through the water channels?

Not if you’re common citizenry of India.

No siree, if you’re common citizenry of India, you needs must stay off the grass, keep walking, never stop and sit, not cross any barricade and never ever touch as much as half a tiny rose petal. No, I don’t blame anyone, I seriously don’t; these measures are necessary, they’re just what I would’ve done if I had a big, beautiful garden and allowed visitors in the time of the year when it was the loveliest. The management, I say, was very competent and Madam’s Men deserve all possible accolades.

But what, I wonder, of Madam herself? It is her garden after all – or at least hers as long as the other Madam wills it so; to what good use, I wonder, does she put it to?

Certainly not to have sherbets and then make out, I suppose. I mean, the website says she has her At Homes a certain number of times a year in the front lawn and I suppose she goes out for a walk with hubby dear every now and then, but, with all due respect to age, you can’t really imagine a wizened old dear like our Rashtrapati making merry in the garden. Leave aside making merry, you can’t imagine her with her pallu down. Very prim and propah, I agree, and very Rashtrapati like too I believe, but not, well, not what you’d imagine the owner of a blooming big house with a blooming big garden to be like.

Come to think of it, not only is democracy not good for beauty, it’s also not good for glamour.

Well, at least in India. We have a thing for ji-huzoori and as a result tend to ritualise almost everything into codified institutions. It’s alright mostly, but you feel it the most when it comes to pleasure. A well maintained and landscaped garden’s your bit of the earth, your version of jannat. If we are to have national symbols, then let them be impressive: for a house as big and a garden as beautiful, we need a figure who would complement them both. Not youth necessarily, no, but then also not genial grand-dames, or erratic, eccentric rocket scientists, or bespectacled diplomats…these are, were, all good folk in themselves and undoubtedly did good to their office, but then that was it. Whatever intelligence, cunning, wit and malice they had hardly came out, the President’s office being sacrosanct in a way in which even monarchies are not today. All said and done, India’s more a throned republic than a true blue democracy.

Not that I have too many problems with that, not here at least; but then if we are to be so and not what we profess ourselves to be, then we could at least make sure our figureheads look worthy to wear a crown. It doesn’t have to be someone with a particular build and colour, just anybody who’d look impressive walking down the steps of the world’s largest presidential manor, who’d inspire a certain awe taking the salute from one of the world’s only surviving mounted regiment, who’d hush audiences into attentive silence, not by the dint of his/her office but by his/her mere presence…

Ah well, ah well, well, well…democracy! We all owe much to it; I owe the ability to say this to it. Ingratitude? Somewhat, yes. Can’t really help it, can one? When you have symbols pregnant with a certain unsaid but pervasive sense of power, you cannot but be so. Humanity, I suppose, craves a light to follow…yet, uneasy the head that wears a crown. So, I believe, the rituals which balm the constant prick of thorns, the institutions which temper awe from and for the mob…a beautiful garden, after all, is not just a bit of land done up nicely to please. Not just, for to please though it is, it is also to remind, to reassert hierarchies and power, to put in mind the might of the gardener to and for whom we are all bound.

That, I suppose, is what this one was ultimately all about.