Bishen came of a poor family and had a terrible childhood confronting scarcity, want and hunger. It affected him greatly and he began to ponder on his life’s miserable situation and this adversity made him a thinking man. He began to hate the filth and poverty in which he was brought up and there were days when the whole family had nothing to eat and went to bed on empty stomach. Lot of nightmares ensued as a result, when he was pursued across some burning planes by a skeleton monster of hunger with a trishul in his hand and with that he pierced his chest. That pain brought him out of his sleep with a scream when he realized that his stomach was actually rumbling with spasm of hunger pain.

As he grew up he began to think about his future. His parents did not have enough money to send him for higher education and as a matter of fact he left the school after only eight grades and tried to find a way of earning his living so as not to be a victim of hunger and poverty all his life. He went around the surrounding villages to observe how the people managed to earn their crusts to keep them alive. Most of the inhabitants were farmers with small land holdings. His parents had no such luxury and only worked as day labourers. He did not want to do those labouring job as there was no guarantee of regular work and even on the farms the wages were pitiable and you were tied to the land for number of years as a contract worker.

Once in a village he saw a man holding his jaw and crying aloud with pain and out of curiosity he followed him to the bazaar and then to a shack of a so-called ‘dentist’. There was a display of various teeth pulled out of people’s mouths, some in solid condition and some in broken and worn out state. There were coloured charts- inner jaws showing rows of teeth in enlarged scale. In front of the shelf lay various instruments of torture like pliers, hammers, needles etc.

He saw the man in muted growling voice trying to explain to the ‘ quack’ the intense toothache he was suffering from and he was told to open his mouth wide when the quack examined each of his lower teeth with a tiny hammer, knocking at each and listening to the echo of sound blows. Tears were running from patient’s eye and with each blow he gave out an anguished scream and when he touched the painful tooth, it was too much to bear and he rolled on the ground screaming his head off. The quack taunted him and told him as not to be coward and the patient backed out as if trying to run away from him. The quack got hold his arms and tried to pull him into the operating chairs. The patient was in an extremely anguished state with his face wet and twisted in screams.

As Bishen was standing there, pitying the terrified patient, the quack pointed to him to help him out, by dragging the patient back into the chair and to hold him there till he had pulled the defective tooth and that was an emotional upset for him too but somehow he accomplished the task. The quack was pleased and asked him:

‘What sort of work are you doing?’
‘At the moment I am looking for work.’ Bishen replied

‘You have come at the right time to a right place.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you can work for me as my assistance.’

‘But I have no qualifications.’

‘Neither do I.’ replied the quack with a loud laughter

‘ I learnt my job as I went along. Once I was an assistant to a dentist.’

‘ It must be so emotionally draining.’ Bishen remarked

‘ But you get used to it. I need an assistant urgently. Can you work for me?’

Bishen had no choice but to say ‘yes’.

It was not a job for the faint hearted and one had to have time to get used to it. It was job full of emotional distress at seeing people screaming under the assaults of the ‘quack’, however kindly these were intended. The poor peasants had no recourse to expensive dental treatments in the towns, so they had to fall back on the local ‘surgery’ however crude it may be, if it could only relieve their unbearable pain.

The quack worked mainly on two fronts- either extracting the tooth by mechanical appliances where a crude force was used or he applied a sort of herbal lotion to the painful swollen gums. He said that it was a secret recipe given to him by his teacher and if Bishen stayed with him, he might pass it to him.

Bishen was glad to be employed even if the working conditions were unpleasant, as at least he could fill his stomach and survive without dying of starvation. At the end of the day he was physically and emotionally exhausted; by keeping the kicking and screaming patient down his manual force. This went on for number of years until he ‘graduated’ through the course of dentistry and gained sufficient knowledge and confidence to operate on his own. The quack decided to retire and sold his ’booming’ practice at a knockdown price to Bishen.

Bishen started his practice but he needed a strong man as his assistant to hold down his patients as he operated on them. He enquired about for such a man and was told that there was an ex wrestler in a village about five miles to the east. On his free day he ventured out to the location and saw the wrestler Punnu, the Pelhwan and was duly impressed by his physique and appearances. He offered him his assistant’s job on a commission basis, which he accepted as Punnu had fallen on hard times and thus they both started their joint venture. Things went well for a while but soon the number of clients began to fall. Things could not go along like that and they had to scratch their heads to find a solution. At last they found a solution however cruel it might be.

There were various melas or fairs in the surrounding districts to which both would go and set up a temporary ‘dentistry’ stall. Punnu would go out to look for a suitable victim who seemed to be prosperous and could afford to pay for the treatment. He would show them a suit of playing cards and challenge people to have a betting game of card with him, as he was sure that he could beat anyone. People did not like a big peasant challenging their intelligence and agreed to play for which they had to put a large amount of money in a central box.

In order to annoy them Punnu kept a card up his sleeve and at the appropriate moment slipped into his deal to win that around. The other players became infuriated and set upon him for trickery but he was too strong for them and with his big fists gave them such a drubbings that most of their teeth were knocked out and they were screaming with pain and anger.

At that moment the ‘dentist’ used to turn up and asked what was that fuss was all about.

‘I have got a wounded mouth.’ one person screamed

‘I too have a wounded mouth.’ called the second

And the dentist offered them a treatment at a cut price and which was about twice the fee for his normal routine charges.

Bishen was making good money and even with deductions of commission to Punnu for ‘The wounded mouths’, Bishen had no excuse to complain. There were plenty of melas all year around and they moved to different locations as not to be recognised.

As all good things come to an end, this happened to our team. After few years of their trickery, people began to get suspicious and few reported the matter to the authorities. One day Bishen received the news that policemen were looking for the team and wanted to interview them. It was time to vanish from the scene and go somewhere else where he was not so ‘popular’.

Durlabh Singh© 2008.