THE LINE BETWEEN

The line between illness and wellness is tenuous. One minute it seems we’re immortal (even though we know others are not). The next minute we are actually riding with Yama.

There was a moment during my implant procedure this past Thursday when I thought my skull would crack straight down the middle. The nurse shoved something into the left side of my mouth and then another into the right. The surgeon’s voice cut in. “Bite down hard! There is going to be tremendous pressure now. Hang in there, alright?” I braced myself. I could be leaving the world. O Ganesha, I thought, I’ll break you a thousand coconuts. Let my skull stay intact. And thus I lived to tell the tale of an incisor implant.

Who would ever want to live through something that unpleasant again? My incisor loomed large through the past year. I’d had severe bone loss. I’d also had an abscess but I’d been unaware of it for a time and had no clue that neglecting the abscess itself had been an enormous risk on my part. These things can turn septic and when anything turns septic in your body, it’s a sign, that it may be time to meet your maker. Apparently, sepsis, in general, may not give you adequate warning.

In Hindu mythology, we believe that the god of death, Yama, comes riding on a bull to claim a life. Trust me, when you have sepsis, you’re actually on the bull, and the bull you’re on is actually about to kick the dust off his hooves on his onward journey towards a next life on a new planet. In October 2021, with that abscess still in my gum, I celebrated my milestone birthday not realizing, the whole time, that Yama and his bull had already set their GPS to point to our home in California. I beat Yama to it, thank the lord. Six months later, by March 2022, my incisor had been extracted, the abscess had been drained but I now had a gaping hole when I smiled.

We talk of near misses in our lives but we never know, do we? When we were in one of India’s gorgeous estates in Coorg in western India in late January, we had another reminder of the fragility of our lives. One evening, after a memorable sumptuous meal downed with tamarind margarita, life seemed to change in an instant. For the next 36 hours, my husband wouldn’t leave the bed except for his many visits to the bathroom. The man who bounds off from one conference to the next party would not talk or move. He would not touch his phone. It was as if he didn't know about the existence of WhatsApp. He hadn’t updated Facebook in over 24 hours. My old man who was in a wilderness paradise was really in purgatory, dangling over the abyss called food poisoning. Just like that.

The line between illness and wellness is tenuous. One minute we’re raring to go. We’re immortal (even though we know others are not). The next minute we are actually riding with Yama, holding on to a bull’s horns even as we’re swept off into the yonder. That’s exactly how I felt as I bit down on the mouth guards on the afternoon of my implant surgery.

I had been so fit before the procedure. Hours after my implant, I felt unwell and strange. That same evening, a storm raged outside my home. I was afraid we’d lose a tree to nature’s fury. As the skies darkened, I hunkered down in the family room, my gum sore, my lips dry and chapped. By the next morning, however, all was calm. Inside my mouth, the bleeding had stopped. A whole section of our fence had fallen, however, a huge gaping hole now where there used to be none.