Unlike other people who shy away from it, I simply love filling forms. You can hand me any application – visa, immigration, customs, bank account opening, money transfer, feedback, airline miles, hotel loyalty programme, etc – and I find myself happily scribbling in the blanks.
Very often, nobody reads my suggestions. I know this because, in one departmental store, I noticed a trash basket positioned right under the wooden box into which the customer grievance letters were supposed to be placed. I tapped the bottom of the contraption, which was hanging precariously, and realized to my dismay where such correspondence was going – straight inside the rubbish bin!
This dampened my enthusiasm for a few days as I pondered over the sheer futility of the entire exercise. I mean, there was no point in investing my time and energy on doing something that could find its way into a shredding machine, said the voice in my head. There should be other ways to be gainfully employed, I muttered to myself.
Thereafter, I managed to control my compulsion for some time and avoided all sorts of forms. But one evening I got a severe toothache and had to look urgently for some emergency dental care.
The thing about teeth pain, on an aside, is that it can strike at any godforsaken hour, and it is only then that one grudgingly values the services of a good dentist.
Incidentally, in India, the country of my birth, dentistry is not taken very seriously. The universal opinion is that any medical student who does not get high enough grades to enrol into a medical college goes on to become a dentist.
Most often, they are not even called dentists but referred to as teeth doctors. In such a scenario, village barbers also double up as dental surgeons, often pulling out the errant tooth with pieces of string!
But when painful circumstances compelled me to visit one, I took my husband along for moral support. It was not a good idea because my spouse viewed dentists with great suspicion. According to him, they were all crooks who fixed one tooth only to accidentally chip the next one. He told me repeatedly that the best way to retain a set of healthy teeth was to stay away from the whole lot of them. So, like any good wife, I heard him out, and then promptly ignored his advice.
We walked into the swanky dentist’s clinic in complete silence. A receptionist welcomed us and asked if it was our first visit. She then handed out some forms to fill. I grabbed them eagerly because this time I know that whatever I wrote would be read by the good doctor.
After the initial name, age and address section, the real questionnaire unfolded. The queries were thorough, and I glanced at them carefully before responding.
“What can we do to make you smile?” I read the first question aloud.
“Get rid of my toothache”, I scrawled.
“Do you grind your teeth?” was the next query.
“Say yes”, urged my spouse.
“No”, I wrote down.
“Do you feel nervous about visiting a dentist?” I was asked.
“I do”, my husband grumbled, as I replied in the negative.
“What is the one thing you hate about a dental visit?” was the last question.
“I will reply to that”, my husband took the pen from me this time.
“The excruciatingly long wait?” I prompted.
“The excruciatingly large bill”, he jotted.
By Nickunj Malik
|| features@portugalresident.com
Nickunj Malik’s journalistic career began when she walked into the office of Khaleej Times newspaper in Dubai thirty-one years ago and got the job. Since then, her articles have appeared in various newspapers all over the world. She now resides in Portugal and is married to a banker who loves numbers more than words.
