Toothless Tiger
During my long and not so illustrious business career I pounced on every opportunity that came my way, followed every lead to a fruitful conclusion and shared the rewards of my efforts with my partner and the kids leaving bits and pieces for others. My competitors grudgingly compared me to a tiger. I tried to live up to my reputation and, even though I say it myself, some would agree that I largely succeeded.
Time rolls on and our best days are soon behind us. We grow old and with old age come, not wisdom, but the aches and pains. Not counting loss of hair where you need it and growth where you don’t and the number of pills you have to swallow every morning and night to keep blood pressure and cholesterol in check and energy level up, the deficiencies you learn to take in your stride are countless: the back hurts after minimal gardening; knees refuse to hold you up when you run for the bus, eyes do not tell you the extent of the drop in the price of your stock and ears do not catch the soft tones in your favourite symphony. But these are mere inconveniences compared to what happens in your mouth. You eat a pecan, the tongue is all cankers, try to crack a pistachio nut with your teeth, teeth threaten to crack. Of course your spouse realizes the travails of an old body and empathizes when she gets an opportunity but mostly you suffer in isolation because you believe in Tolstoy’s dictum “Wretchedness shared makes one doubly wretched.”
A year ago my time arrived at a more severe stage: the teeth started to ache even when no nuts were in sight. The dentist examined their reflection in a tiny mirror, knocked them with a hammer with varying intensity, took x-rays and decided three of them had to come out. These were adjacent to the ones I had lost in my youth in unpleasant episodes. The teeth came out without much hassle in dentist’s comfy chair. However, I soon discovered that my left jaw was now useless when it came to biting and the right jaw functioned under protest.
It took a few months but I learnt to get by with bite on one side alone. Then one night when the clock was striking two I woke up with a sharp pain on the right side of my mouth. Three different painkillers of increasing potency did not help. What did work was brushing the teeth with my rotating electric brush. The pain subsided and then returned with vengeance after ten minutes. I spent the night alternately on a couch in the living room trying to rest and in the bathroom brushing the teeth. Time does move on, albeit horribly slowly when one is in pain. Morning eventually arrived; grandkids woke up and provided some diversion. Midday was the earliest the dentist could see me. I was in his reception room at 11 sharp.
The usual inspection in the tiny mirror, hammering and the x-rays produced the expected conclusion – the lower wisdom tooth had to come out and it had to come out soon. For once fortune smiled on me and the dentist had time to do it straight away. Out came the syringe, in went the local anesthetic and numb became the right side of my mouth. The dentist mumbled that the tooth had to come out in two parts. My mouth was stretched to its widest as if I were an aging tenor trying to get out my last high C for the expectant audience of thousands and held that way with clamps. The assistant passed a chisel and a hammer and the dentist hammered away at the tooth asking me occasionally if I felt any pain. I answered “Gaaaaa” which encouraged him to hit harder and harder. At last he exchanged the crude but highly effective tools for a tong. My mouth still stretched to its limits, he grabbed the tooth in the tong while the assistant held my face firmly in her hands, head resting on her ample breasts. He pulled up, pushed to one side and then the other and pulled up again and again and again till – aha, the hand shot out and I saw triumph in his eyes and the red culprit in his tongs. The process was repeated with the other half of the tooth till the triumphant doctor had removed the remains of my wisdom. While stitching the gap where the tooth was, he advised me to avoid any food intake for several hours and take painkiller when the anesthetic had worn off in the evening. He then asked the assistant to join him for lunch in a nearby steakhouse.
A week has gone by. I don’t have the ache and I sleep through the night but now my right jaw does not bite either. All my suffering is concentrated at meal times when the family is enjoying the wonderful cooking of my wife while I struggle with broccoli.
No one has ever called me a softie who feels sorry for himself, at least not in my hearing. But let me tell you. There is no one in the forest more deserving of pity than a toothless tiger.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Why Should the Kids Do Home Work
A couple who are both lawyers made the news earlier this week by negotiating with the Calgary Catholic School Board that their kids will not have to do any home work. I will not be surprised if the threat of legal action by not so busy lawyers persuaded the authorities to give in rather than spend taxpayer money on a long battle in the courts. In any event, it appears from the report that the parents were the ones doing the home work when kids were playing hockey, attending ballet lessons, playing video games, “learning social skills” with mates in the mall, whatever.
It reminded me of a flight to Ottawa a few years ago when the middle-aged passenger in the next seat spent all four hours complaining to this south Asian immigrant that his kids were not able to go to good professional schools because “yellow and brown” immigrants had filled all the available places. When I asked him about their grades he responded that the immigrant kids who had “nothing else to do” set the bar so high that his kids had to make do with the C average. By “nothing else to do” he perhaps meant that they did the home work rather than do all the things C graders do, some of them I listed above.
We should have learnt what we don’t seem to have done, globalization means that the Canadians compete with Chinese and Indian professionals and blue collar workers not only in Canada but also in their home countries. China has been able to lend the U.S. two trillion dollars, and the U.S. had needed to borrow that humongous sum, for two main reasons. First, the workers there are prepared to work for less. But second reason is also important, may be more so. Not only the workers have shown ability to learn new skills quickly, they work as long as it takes to get the work done. North American workers have failed on both accounts and therefore, the manufacturing industries have moved to more hospitable environment.
We may get out of current recession theoretically by statistical manipulation or by unproductive jobs created by various levels of governments. However, for sustained employment and prosperity we must compete with the countries we have contemptuously called “Third World” for so long. In view of the history of China, Brazil and India it should not have surprised us that these countries are leaping ahead not only in industries that need muscle but also in those that need brains. Unfortunately, developing the capacity of brains needs hard work and discipline. These faculties are developed in childhood and schooling plays a major role in it. The children who cooperate with their teachers and get the most out of their schooling are better prepared to cope with high expectations at the University and in a professional career than those who consistently complain about “home work.” Perhaps, the term home work puts people off because our culture looks down on work. If we called it “life preparation” it might be more palatable.
The Western world is lucky that so many immigrants from these countries have settled here to make up for the chronic shortage of professionals and their children still retain the culture of considering hard work in youth as preparation for life. However, I have a warning note. On my visits to India I used to be inundated by requests for help in emigration by young and not so young professionals – doctors, engineers, managers, entrepreneurs. On my last visit a year ago, not one individual contacted me. Canada hadn’t become colder and otherwise less pleasant destination; just that they were doing fine and had no need to leave home for a strange land.
It is imperative that we rediscover the will Canadians had one or two generations ago to develop the innate skills from an early age. That means doing the home work in all meanings of the term. Alternative is to too depressing to contemplate.
Calgary Herald, November 21, 2009
A couple who are both lawyers made the news earlier this week by negotiating with the Calgary Catholic School Board that their kids will not have to do any home work. I will not be surprised if the threat of legal action by not so busy lawyers persuaded the authorities to give in rather than spend taxpayer money on a long battle in the courts. In any event, it appears from the report that the parents were the ones doing the home work when kids were playing hockey, attending ballet lessons, playing video games, “learning social skills” with mates in the mall, whatever.
It reminded me of a flight to Ottawa a few years ago when the middle-aged passenger in the next seat spent all four hours complaining to this south Asian immigrant that his kids were not able to go to good professional schools because “yellow and brown” immigrants had filled all the available places. When I asked him about their grades he responded that the immigrant kids who had “nothing else to do” set the bar so high that his kids had to make do with the C average. By “nothing else to do” he perhaps meant that they did the home work rather than do all the things C graders do, some of them I listed above.
We should have learnt what we don’t seem to have done, globalization means that the Canadians compete with Chinese and Indian professionals and blue collar workers not only in Canada but also in their home countries. China has been able to lend the U.S. two trillion dollars, and the U.S. had needed to borrow that humongous sum, for two main reasons. First, the workers there are prepared to work for less. But second reason is also important, may be more so. Not only the workers have shown ability to learn new skills quickly, they work as long as it takes to get the work done. North American workers have failed on both accounts and therefore, the manufacturing industries have moved to more hospitable environment.
We may get out of current recession theoretically by statistical manipulation or by unproductive jobs created by various levels of governments. However, for sustained employment and prosperity we must compete with the countries we have contemptuously called “Third World” for so long. In view of the history of China, Brazil and India it should not have surprised us that these countries are leaping ahead not only in industries that need muscle but also in those that need brains. Unfortunately, developing the capacity of brains needs hard work and discipline. These faculties are developed in childhood and schooling plays a major role in it. The children who cooperate with their teachers and get the most out of their schooling are better prepared to cope with high expectations at the University and in a professional career than those who consistently complain about “home work.” Perhaps, the term home work puts people off because our culture looks down on work. If we called it “life preparation” it might be more palatable.
The Western world is lucky that so many immigrants from these countries have settled here to make up for the chronic shortage of professionals and their children still retain the culture of considering hard work in youth as preparation for life. However, I have a warning note. On my visits to India I used to be inundated by requests for help in emigration by young and not so young professionals – doctors, engineers, managers, entrepreneurs. On my last visit a year ago, not one individual contacted me. Canada hadn’t become colder and otherwise less pleasant destination; just that they were doing fine and had no need to leave home for a strange land.
It is imperative that we rediscover the will Canadians had one or two generations ago to develop the innate skills from an early age. That means doing the home work in all meanings of the term. Alternative is to too depressing to contemplate.
Calgary Herald, November 21, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Setting Priorities
Eventually the snow disappeared from the roads and the chances of it staying for long in the event of an unseasonal snowfall were slim. It was time to replace the snow tires with summer tires. The garage down the road did that one morning for my car and I paid $220 for spin cleaning and balancing the wheels and switching tires without complaint. The mechanic said that there were too many cracks in the windshield and recommended that it should be replaced. Next day I paid $304 for a shiny new curved plate of glass. I will buy new summer tires for my wife’s car later this week and add another seven hundred dollars to my debt to the card company. I will then have spent over twelve hundred dollars, quite ungrudgingly, in the cause of the safety of the family.
This morning I had a dental check up. X-rays, cleaning by the hygienist and an examination by the dentist added up to $375. That was more than replacing the tires but it is to be expected. The dentist is a professional and has undergone many years of training. Furthermore, my teeth are the gateway to my body and soul and they deserve the most expert care available. Not to be outdone by the garage mechanic when it came to suggesting further expense, the dentist strongly recommended that a molar should be crowned, at a cost of approximately $1,100. The sum involved was less than the total bill for tires yet it came as a shock. I decided to think about it for a while.
Why did I not agree straight away and set an appointment date as I had done for the windshield? The safety of the family is of paramount importance and dangerous components in the car are not acceptable. The time window for changing tires is small. The crown, on the other hand, was not urgent and could wait for a while; after all I could still chew and the tooth did not hurt. A few months ago when my wisdom tooth was playing up, its extraction was the top priority and snow tires had to wait. It is the squeaky wheel that gets attended to first, not the silent sufferer. But is it sensible? As a volunteer driver for cancer patients I have come across cases where seemingly intelligent women noticed a lump on their breast but delayed check ups because it did not hurt. The association of pain with sickness runs deep in our psyche. A tumour can grow at its leisure in our body and the host does not pay attention till it hurts. By then it may be too late to do much about it. The cure, in any event, is painful, long and life-altering in most cases.
Do we run to the doctor every time we notice something unusual? Is every cold going to turn into pneumonia, every cut end up in bleeding to death? Well, the life of a hypochondriac is not a happy one. While it is wasteful to run to the doctor at the first sniffle, it is foolish not to pay him a visit after one has been coughing for several days. One can’t run to Emergency Clinic when a Band Aid will do the trick but it is equally silly to bandage a deep cut and hope for the best. Thanks to Medicare we can receive care without worrying about the bill. We must use medical services when needed and if there is error to be made it has to be towards visiting the physician rather than “not wasting his time.” Similarly, it makes sense to promptly attend to the suggestions of the dentist. Delay could cause the tooth to decay beyond repair. However, most of us do not have adequate dental insurance and the dentist’s bill can strain an otherwise comfortable budget. Financial demands are relentless in most families and what does not hurt often goes to the bottom of the to-do list even though we know that the consequences may be dire.
We all have to juggle priorities whatever our means. I believe I learnt how to do it when I was growing up in India. In our family of six, the person with the most urgent need was attended to first and others waited till their need could be met. What if every one’s need was equally urgent? Often the times were hard and once in a while there was not enough for every one to eat. In some families in such circumstances the males got to eat and females went without, in others father got his fill even if little was left for others. In our family my mother made sure that every one, including herself, got something and no one went totally without. By her actions, not words mind you, my mother taught us children that in a loving family every member got his/her due and we shared in bad fortune as well as in good. Our parents earned our love and we honoured their wishes because we respected them, not out of fear of punishment or deprivation. My wife and I have tried to carry on the tradition of familial love and mutual respect. We will discuss all our current cash needs in this spirit and the dentist’s recommendation will receive its due priority as did the cars.
Eventually the snow disappeared from the roads and the chances of it staying for long in the event of an unseasonal snowfall were slim. It was time to replace the snow tires with summer tires. The garage down the road did that one morning for my car and I paid $220 for spin cleaning and balancing the wheels and switching tires without complaint. The mechanic said that there were too many cracks in the windshield and recommended that it should be replaced. Next day I paid $304 for a shiny new curved plate of glass. I will buy new summer tires for my wife’s car later this week and add another seven hundred dollars to my debt to the card company. I will then have spent over twelve hundred dollars, quite ungrudgingly, in the cause of the safety of the family.
This morning I had a dental check up. X-rays, cleaning by the hygienist and an examination by the dentist added up to $375. That was more than replacing the tires but it is to be expected. The dentist is a professional and has undergone many years of training. Furthermore, my teeth are the gateway to my body and soul and they deserve the most expert care available. Not to be outdone by the garage mechanic when it came to suggesting further expense, the dentist strongly recommended that a molar should be crowned, at a cost of approximately $1,100. The sum involved was less than the total bill for tires yet it came as a shock. I decided to think about it for a while.
Why did I not agree straight away and set an appointment date as I had done for the windshield? The safety of the family is of paramount importance and dangerous components in the car are not acceptable. The time window for changing tires is small. The crown, on the other hand, was not urgent and could wait for a while; after all I could still chew and the tooth did not hurt. A few months ago when my wisdom tooth was playing up, its extraction was the top priority and snow tires had to wait. It is the squeaky wheel that gets attended to first, not the silent sufferer. But is it sensible? As a volunteer driver for cancer patients I have come across cases where seemingly intelligent women noticed a lump on their breast but delayed check ups because it did not hurt. The association of pain with sickness runs deep in our psyche. A tumour can grow at its leisure in our body and the host does not pay attention till it hurts. By then it may be too late to do much about it. The cure, in any event, is painful, long and life-altering in most cases.
Do we run to the doctor every time we notice something unusual? Is every cold going to turn into pneumonia, every cut end up in bleeding to death? Well, the life of a hypochondriac is not a happy one. While it is wasteful to run to the doctor at the first sniffle, it is foolish not to pay him a visit after one has been coughing for several days. One can’t run to Emergency Clinic when a Band Aid will do the trick but it is equally silly to bandage a deep cut and hope for the best. Thanks to Medicare we can receive care without worrying about the bill. We must use medical services when needed and if there is error to be made it has to be towards visiting the physician rather than “not wasting his time.” Similarly, it makes sense to promptly attend to the suggestions of the dentist. Delay could cause the tooth to decay beyond repair. However, most of us do not have adequate dental insurance and the dentist’s bill can strain an otherwise comfortable budget. Financial demands are relentless in most families and what does not hurt often goes to the bottom of the to-do list even though we know that the consequences may be dire.
We all have to juggle priorities whatever our means. I believe I learnt how to do it when I was growing up in India. In our family of six, the person with the most urgent need was attended to first and others waited till their need could be met. What if every one’s need was equally urgent? Often the times were hard and once in a while there was not enough for every one to eat. In some families in such circumstances the males got to eat and females went without, in others father got his fill even if little was left for others. In our family my mother made sure that every one, including herself, got something and no one went totally without. By her actions, not words mind you, my mother taught us children that in a loving family every member got his/her due and we shared in bad fortune as well as in good. Our parents earned our love and we honoured their wishes because we respected them, not out of fear of punishment or deprivation. My wife and I have tried to carry on the tradition of familial love and mutual respect. We will discuss all our current cash needs in this spirit and the dentist’s recommendation will receive its due priority as did the cars.
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