The Thing About Interdental Brushes

Prevention is better than cure.

Seriously!

Especially when cure is, well limited and the damage has already been done and all you can do is prevent the damage from spreading further.

So today, I did my best to follow my dentist's advice.

Brushing. Tongue cleaning (with a special tongue-cleaning brush). Mouthwash. Interdental brushes.

If I had done, like a quarter of this, before (and visited the dentist more often), I wouldn't be stuck with sadly depleted mobile lower teeth and gaps between my teeth the size of modern-day orphanages.

So anyway, I've started on RK Narayan's "A Writer's Nightmare", a series of essays (or column articles) he wrote for "The Hindu" over a span of 20 years, and the first essay was about mathematics and how it always reduced him to tears.

Kind of like me and Physics, I thought.

I not only wept piteously, I wrote reams of heartfelt, passionate poetry about it. About how much I hated it.

Today has been a day lessons. (Lessons I seem to have to learn over and over again because they never quite stick).

Firstly, do not touch chilli seeds.

And if you do, wash your hands quickly. Use lots of soap.

Which I didn't. Instead of washing my hands using lots of soap, I proceeded to expose them to the hot stove as I was making asparagus belachan. And Kerala spicy fish curry.

Anyway, back my en-chillied fingers, I finished making the two dishes, had a shower, crawled into bed, rubbed my hands with lotion, and whimpered softly. My fingers were on fire.

Come on, I said, to whatever higher force there was around me. Please tell me what to do.

A picture popped into my head. Of me chopping up the chillies. Removing the seeds by hand. And then not washing my hand. And a voice said, of course you're in pain. Your hand is still full of the lethal chilli juice.

And I leapt out of bed and ran to the tap and squeezed out a sizeable amount of handwash. And washed. And washed. And washed my hands.

And whaddyaknow...it worked.

Not completely as the heat from this keyboard is making them sting again. But enough.

Oh the relief!

OK, painful again, gotta go now.

Later for you.