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Implants in the Indus- 'you can really sink your teeth into this country!'
Greetings to all sentient beings residing in this world of pain:
This week, I availed myself of the wonders of modern India. With my iPod earbuds tucked firmly into my floppy mule ears and listening to Australian aboriginal didge honking, Tibetan chants, and Nick Cave singing 'Dig Lazarus Dig', I submitted myself to Indian oral surgeon Dr. Krishna Vishwanath (or a multi-syllabic south Indian name something like that!), my dentist Dr. Siddharth Sachdeva, his father Dr. Sachdeva, and a couple more assistants, who implanted 4 minature versions of Delhi's Q'atab Minar minarets (actually manufactured in Denmark out of titanium), into my lower jaw bone. Thus far, I have heard no mullas calling the faithful to prayer yet from my implants. Although the dentists did paint my beard and mustachio with iodine as a sterile precaution, so I came away from the ordeal looking like I had made the haj to Mecca. The iodine henna color all came out in the wash, but I have encountered Muslims in India in the past who come up to me on the street and ask 'fakir'? (they are inquiring if I am a Muslim saint or holy man- you know the type, they sit on beds of nails). I always reply: 'yes, I am a 'fakir' but not in the way you think'.
The surgeon was an excellent man with a needle, having practiced many times injecting into blobs of mozarella cheese made from Indian water buffalo milk, so I didn't feel a thing throughout the whole procedure (the secret is to inject slowly). Being on the receiving end of drill bits going straight into the jawbone is not unlike the effect of drilling into a concrete sidewalk with a dull ceramic bit. Fortunately, these bits were a bit sharper! The rachetting of the implant sleeves produced a click/clicking sound similar to torqueing up bolts when changing a tire. The precision sockets were then stitched under the gum for several months to allow bone and tissue to grow around the implants. My mouth currently feels like the inside of a porcupine, with end pieces of nylon stitching flying off in all directions. This is the small price one must pay when volunteering one's body to science!
Fortunately, I am feeling no pain or swelling thanks to the powerful drugs which are feely available in India- EVEN TO INDIAN DOCTORS AND DENTISTS!!! I was informed by the team that I was 'the ideal patient'. I told them that as Buddha said: 'we are all temporary people', and when you have been beaten down like the Electric Mule has been, and when you have reached 'a certain age', all you can do is submit without whimpering. BUT WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN? Probably nothing, except for the fact that we are speaking about INDIA!!! A so-called 'third world country' which is now starting to emerge and view itself as an equal competitor on the world stage with the US and China. And therein lies the contradiction!!!
Once you step outside the door of your modern Indian CAT-Scan lab or Atomic Energy facility, you are thrust back into a swirling, whirling maelstrom of masses of people of every description and type imaginable (here comes the colon followed by a list!): cars- both new/old/bashed/smashed; bicycle rickshaws and junky buses belching black smoke; modern low-riding buses; garbage strewn everywhere; flyover and subway construction at every turn; hi-rise buildings with bamboo scaffolding and no safety harnesses for the barefoot workers climbing like monkeys everywhere, piss on the walls; human excement on the sidewalk; upscale Western style shopping malls; luxury 5 star hotels where you can literally eat off the floor; newspaper stands selling papers in the many Indian languages; people with bloody mouths looking like Dracula spitting paan juice against white washed public buildings; telephone, computer, and electrical wires running amok like a spaghetti factory designed by an engineer on LSD; gigantic slums made of cardboard and tin (complete with illegal power and cable tv supplies 'appropriated' by the lower castes); fetid rivers polluted 100 times over safe swimming levels; beatiful women in dazzling fabrics; beggars in rags sleeping on the sidewalks during the day; Bollywood videos playing everywhere with casts of thousands engaged in pelvic thrusts; saffron saddhu holy men protesting about same; students immolating themselves to put pressure on the Central government to create new states (so their caste can get a 'set-aside' job with the government); stray and mangy dogs underfoot and tolerated everywhere; monkeys climbing on cars and fire escapes; child beggars run by gangs, beautiful trees; roundabouts packed with vehicles trying to wedge between each other into impossible positions- honking and gesticulating like multi-armed Hindu gods; green parrots screeching overhead; screeching 'filmy' music from movies blaring everywhere at top decibel; torn up streets for metro construction for the Commonweath Games in October (to prove New Delhi is a 'world class city'- yeah sure!); cars coming at you in the wrong lane and pulling onto the street without looking; crooked taxi drivers; fruit you have never seen before (some of it smelling like old socks!); sarees with brocade that blinds your eyes; foreign tourists in hermetically sealed air-conditioned buses being trundled from one point of interest to another; beaten down donkeys carrying loads of bricks... AND THE ELECTRIC MULE TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL!!!
A Mumbai newspaper reported that the average hourly comings and goings of people past a major clothes franchise like the Gap, was 10,000. Now that's what I call pedestrian traffic! Your humble servant,
The Electric Mule
The British said to the Indians: 'you're a nation'. The Indians said: 'we are free- we can pee anywhere we want!'
copyright Ernest Gusella 2010
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