It was that time of the year again when I had to pay a visit and ‘a lot more’ to my Dentist for my annual dental check-up! He had recently shifted his practice to a polyclinic which housed the clinics of specialists for nearly every part of the human anatomy.
I arrived in time for my appointment at four in the afternoon. The polyclinic had a common waiting room for all sorts of patients. So if you ever wanted to see for yourself all the things which could go wrong with your body do visit your nearest polyclinic.
Looking round I saw a rather well dressed woman, few years above 60, but otherwise in perfect health who was accompanying her daughter and her 8yr old grandson. That little guy, with two front teeth completely sheathed in plaque, was able to read all the doorplates fluently including one which said ‘Orthopaedic Surgeon’ with some help from his grandmother. Well, I was all praise and admiration for the lad and for his grandma!
All seats in the waiting area were taken so I had to station myself beside someone with the highest chance of giving up his or her seat. Well that super-old grandma with golden-dyed hair beside Mrs. Well-to-do seemed fidgety enough!
After about 10mins of straining my foot soles with 550 Newtons of force, Grandma Goldie, which was the only name I could think of giving her, had her name called and so my poor legs and bum finally looked forward to some respite. But at that moment that irate receptionist called out my name and I had to give up my seat which I did, overjoyed that my turn had come up so early!
But my joy was short-lived as she only wanted to know the timing of my appointment which was totally unnecessary as she had given me the appointment herself a few days ago! Still I reminded her politely and went back to my seat. Uhh Oh! What seat! That little twerp had abandoned his mission of reading all doorplates and had pasted his half-ticket bottom and two slippered feet upon the adult-sized seat I had vacated 20secs ago! Well I had no choice but to smile back half-humouredly at him and his grandmother who was beaming radiantly at him! Apparently congratulating him on his conquest! My admiration quickly transformed to contempt not for that lad who was flashing his yellow incisors but for his grandma! Well I was back to the standing position and scouting for more would be seat-vacaters!
Quarter of an hour later, another elderly guy got his turn and no sooner did my jeans touch that metallic chair than another old woman with a shambling gait came out of the Orthopaedic Surgeons Room accompanied presumably by her daughter. They passed 6 seats of which 3 were occupied by relatives of patients and all three seemed to be perfectly healthy! Well as if by some charm all eyes were fixated on me as the shambling duo made their way past the six seats towards mine!
Before I could even think, my chivalrous bum detached itself from metal like an involuntary response and I found myself standing once again! Without so much as an appreciative smile or nod (verbal thanks was like asking too much) oldie enjoyed the semi-comfort of the seat and immediately began squirming and complaining about its hardness.
Her daughter, like me, thought that the door-plate-reading lad was wasting seat space which was already at a premium and demanded that he share his seat with her! Well he was little more than one-third my age but had more expertise in making faces and grimaces at the woman who had encroached upon his conquest. Well one look at his grandma’s face told me that it was an inherited trait!
Ten minutes later, a senior citizen with his knee in plaster cast emerged from a room. Well this time it was my turn to glower reproachfully at those women who had earlier mutely demanded that I be sympathetic to oldie! One of them begrudgingly managed to heave Her Hugeness off her seat and as she did so her eyes looked around for any spontaneous adulation for her, and like me, she was disappointed but I was in no mood to empathize with her!
Well an act of chivalry and one of forced kindness seemed to have infused everyone with compassionate desires. In the next 15mins a couple of more relatives and a saffron clad myopic patient relinquished their seats to the 'Les Miserables'!
Meanwhile, the lad got hold of his mother’s cell phone and pretty soon everything from Auld Lang Syne and Beethoven's Symphony to Dhan te nan and Munni Badnam Hui began blaring in loud and cracked tones! Gauging from the quality of the sound and the touch screen User Interface it could only have been a cheap handset from our mass-producing neighbour! So Mrs.Well to do was a miser using a banned handset probably with a cloned IMEI! Apparently, the lad's and his grandma's vocabulary skills were limited to words describing medical professionals as they couldn't comprehend the sign given in bold-'Please switch off your mobiles'!
A jeans-clad, young couple was seated in a front row with the girl wearing dark glasses.
They looked quite glum and the guy was holding her hand. I felt sorry for her, having so weak an eyesight or probably none at all at such a young age! But sometime later, the receptionist called out their name and both strode quite comfortably into the Gynaec's office! I would have kicked myself had I not had stiff legs at the time. And also the girl for wearing those glasses which closely resembled those worn after an eye-surgery! Still, the glumness remained a mystery and while I was berating myself for my stupidity their newly-vacated seats got taken which wholly justified it!
The next hour was pretty uneventful. The sawing and polishing sounds coming from the dentist's office were making the yellow-toothed lad quite nervous. I wanted to 'ease off' his anxiety by telling him of my first quite painful date with the dentist, but, the memory of my first time made me kind enough not to tell him!
The paediatrician who had arrived sometime ago soon saw a stream of latest wailing-but-cute 'hand-helds', still-in-vogue-but-tantrum-throwing 'laptops' and fidgety 'runnables' who don't work as you want them to unless whacked on the bottom every now and then!
The receptionist kept on calling out to people who had arrived quite later than I had. I asked her about this preferential treatment several times but, only got a cold 'YOU SHALL BE INFORMED WHEN YOUR TIME COMES', retort each time. I made a mental note to ask the doctor, the payment plan and features of this new Premium Service started by the receptionist.
Finally, after 172mins of either warming the metallic chairs or air drying my sweaty shirt while standing under the full blast of the lone AC, my name was called! I nearly cried with joy and could have hugged the guy next to me had he not been wearing that tight bubblegum pink t-shirt!
For all my trouble, the dentist probed around the inside of my mouth for a while, tapped a few teeth, informed me that my teeth and gums were proud of me and charged me 250 bucks for it!
Grunt...Grunt..!
