A visit to the Dentist

Here, in the village, Dr Chippy Thrideep opened the Varuna Dental and Orthodontic Centre just three weeks ago. The road outside is dusty and littered with the inevitable plastic wrappers, and sweet papers but the entrance to the clinic is tiled and I stepped into a haven of air-conditioned comfort.

- it looked like this one in the showroom

My visit stemmed from my annoyance at being charged £35 in Lincolnshire for my dentist to re-fix and cement back one of my crowns that had come loose, and which I just avoided swallowing. He had done a good enough job, but it had taken barely 5 minutes. In a previous visit, his dental hygienist had given my teeth a quick 10-minute once-over with the descaler and polishing brush, and the charge had been £40. A month ago I had looked in the bathroom mirror at home, and seen that my addiction to espresso was staining my teeth badly, and I had decided that while I was in India, I would seek out a clinic that would tackle both these issues.

It was with some trepidation that I had decided to call on the local dentist. I have been staying in Vallyathodu, which barely qualifies as a village. There are just a dozen shops, with merchandise hanging outside on hooks; plastic toys, and cheap dresses, umbrellas and shirts. There is a general store that sells all kinds of agricultural equipment from hoes and mattocks to sickles and winnowing trays. There’s a lovely barber who wears a broad grin as you sit in his enormous revolving chair while he snips away. The price of my haircut was 100 rupees (98pence.)  Then there’s the tea-shop, where old men sip their sweet, milky chai and gossip like Greeks in a Kaphenion or Italians at a bar in the piazza. I had not expected to find a dental clinic, but a colleague at Mattindia had heard that it was recommended.

I sat in the waiting room of the Clinic, scanning the pages of the Kerala equivalent of Homes & Gardens. Only the language differentiated this magazine from any of its European equivalents. There were the same gleaming kitchens with high-gloss cupboard doors and intricate mechanisms for shelves that disappeared into the corner storage. There were vast sofas to accommodate and impress your friends and relations, and there was bedroom furniture that would have graced an oligarch’s seraglio.

After a while I met the dentist. “Hello, I’m Chippy, Chippy Thrideep.” In name and nature, I quickly surmised. Chippy was somewhere in her 20s and had a perfect complexion with huge eyes under perfectly trimmed brows. Her smile was what you would expect from a dentist and, and, um, well – let’s just say that I was confident, for once, that I would enjoy my visit to her clinic.

The consulting room was immaculate. Chippy worked with great concentration, removing any and every trace of coffee and red wine from the dental enamel of my smile. She never nagged me to open wider, she apologised any time the water jet of the ultra-sound touched a sensitive spot, and I just lay back for an hour, admiring the spotlights in the shiny white ceiling.

She gave me strict instructions about letting my crown settle down, and avoiding eating on that side of my mouth, and then she wrote out the bill. Cleaning and polishing, 400 rupees: re-fixing crown, 200 rupees – total 600 rupees. That’s about £5.88.

I didn’t haggle. That smile alone was worth a fiver.