['The
Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News
from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 241th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]
‘Serenity
now’ is a phrase made popular by its use in the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. In
the third episode of the ninth season Frank Costanza, following advice
from an instructional tape yells out ‘serenity now’ whenever he gets
angry in order to keep his blood pressure down. Apparently Steve Koren
wrote it into some of the Seinfeld episodes after hearing his own father
shout ‘serenity now!’ as a rage-controlling exercise he had heard about
from an instructional tape.
Perhaps a full-lunged yell may offer some relief even if it doesn’t quell the pain felt during dental surgery, but that would be quite embarrassing. In fact it’s not even possible to murmur anything let alone ‘serenity now’ in the most subdued form possible. You just sit there and wait until the ordeal is over. For some it may not be as anxious an experience. Maybe they are masochists. Stoic. Transcendental in some way. Speaking strictly for myself, I am terrified of dentists.
Serenity now and forever involves avoiding dental appointments. That seems to have been the mantra that was never clearly thought out but was unconsciously uttered and practiced with an almost religious fervour.
Indeed, if you happen to be in the United States of America and do not have dental insurance, the very thought of a visit to a dentist could send the blood pressure up. And if you do get an excruciating toothache ‘serenity now,’ you might think, is death. Nothing less.
My resourceful sister figured out that there are options for the uninsured. There are places where one could obtain a free examination and if extraction was necessary agreement on paying in instalments. Still expensive. There’s always ‘more to be done’ and all of it costs.
Undeterred, she said, ‘there are dental schools where students attend to you under the supervision of faculty.’
And that’s how I learned about Penn Dental. That’s shorthand for the School of Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania which has teaching clinics ‘providing comprehensive dental care within the scope of the school’s educational programs.’
An appointment was made for a free examination. A general cleanup would cost a fraction of what the other facility would have charged. Affordable. How blessed Sri Lankans are, I thought to myself, not for the first time.
A few days before the appointment a friend called to find out how I was doing. I’ve known him for 46 years. So I told him about the trauma related to dental hygiene.
‘Go to Penn Dental machang!’
‘My sister made an appointment.’
‘When?’
I told him.
‘My daughter is a student there. I’ll ask her if she can see you.’
And so, it was all arranged. We went.
A tiny girl came out to greet us. She didn’t say ‘good morning sir.’ She said ‘Hi uncle!’ and gave me a big hug: ‘don’t worry, I will take care of you!’
And so she examined. Comprehensively. Niyasha Wijedasa was so gentle that at one point when she stopped to write down some notes (she is a student and has to consult the supervising professor at every turn) I even fell asleep. Kind, gentle and an absolute angel. It was not a painless couple of hours, but she talked and laughed and joked and teased and in this way alleviated all anxiety. She was skilled enough to ensure that the discomfiture and pain were minimal. She knew her stuff, clearly, for her supervisors concurred with her diagnosis and approved the procedures she recommended.
So she gave me a treatment plan and asked me to return a few days later for a cleanup (to start with — apparently there’s a lot of work to be done even after that which will have to wait until I return home to Sri Lanka).
Two days later, I related the whole story to my dear friend and new found brother John Hennessy, a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. When I came to the part about the random call from my friend and the discovery that his daughter happened to be a student at Penn Dental, he said, ‘that’s so serendipitous, and that word comes from a name used for your country.’
I hadn’t thought of it that way. Maybe it’s so ‘Sri Lankan’ that we have got used to it. It happens so often that it doesn’t surprise us the way it did John. Maybe it is in our DNA to receive the outrageous and the magical with equanimity. It’s not that we are not enraged or delighted as the case may be, but that such extremes are never imagined to be impossible.
This must be said. Niyasha was kind to me but the passion for dentistry and the drive to correct the innumerable flaws in a patient’s mouth had nothing to do with the fact that I had known her father long before she was born.
‘I had lots of dental issues when I was a kid. They were all sorted. I think that’s why I wanted to study dentistry. I was scared to smile, I didn’t want to talk, but once my teeth were fixed, I was alright. It gave me confidence. And that’s what I want to see in my patients.’
Most of her patients in the years to come will not be Sri Lankans, but all of them, I have no doubt, will be delighted by Niyasha’s charm, kindness and skill. It would be an unanticipated and yet delightful experience.
Serendipity. Now. That’s what Niyasha Wijedasa will offer without saying a word about it. And her patients wouldn’t have to scream or murmur under their breath or through clenched teeth, ‘serenity now.’
Reflections on the unimaginable
Jackson Anthony is a book and will be read
A village called Narberth Bookshop
'Irvin' and other one-word poems
Earth pieces Kerala and Sri Lanka
In the land of insomnial poets
When you don't need an invitation, it's home
When the Canadian House of Commons applauded a Nazi...
The importance of not skipping steps
No free passes to the Land of Integrity
Hector Kobbekaduwa is not a building, statue, street or stamp
Rajagala and the Parable of the Panner
Let's show love to Starbucks employees!
Octavio Paz and Arthur C Clarke in the stratosphere
9/11 and the calm metal instrument of Salvador Allende's voice
Whitman, Neruda and things that wait in all things
Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch
Profit: the peragamankaru of major wars
In loving memory of Carrie Lee (1956-2020)
Mobsters on and off the screen
We're here because we're here because we're here
Sha'Carri Richardson versus and with Sha'Carri Richardson
A stroll with Pragg and Arjun along a boulevard in Baku
Daya Sahabandu ran out of partners but must have smiled to the end
Sapan and voices that erase borders
Problem elephants and problem humans
The 'inhuman' elephant in a human zoo
Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's efforts to align meaning
Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home
Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)
A gateway to illumination in West Virginia
Through strange fissures into magical orchards
There's sea glass love few will see
Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha
Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse
The responsible will not be broken
Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon
Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?
Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing
Journalism inadvertently learned
Reflections on the young poetic heart
Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus
The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'
Subverting the indecency of the mind
Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'
Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter
Seeing, unseeing and seeing again
Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy
The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga
The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down)
Every mountain, every rock, is sacred
Manufacturing passivity and obedience
Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited
In praise of courage, determination and insanity
The relative values of life and death
Poetry and poets will not be buried
Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990)
Sorrowing and delighting the world
Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi
Letters that cut and heal the heart
A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya
The soft rain of neighbourliness
Reflections on waves and markings
Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra
The right time, the right person
The silent equivalent of a thousand words
Crazy cousins are besties for life
The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis
Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins
Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable
Deveni: a priceless one-word koan
Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation
'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone
On sweeping close to one's feet
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
To be an island like the Roberts...
Debts that can never be repaid in full
An island which no flood can overwhelm
A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing
Heart dances that cannot be choreographed
Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember
Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal
It is good to be conscious of nudities
Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday
There's a one in a million and a one in ten
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
Hemantha Gunawardena's signature
Architectures of the demolished
The exotic lunacy of parting gifts
Who the heck do you think I am?
Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'
So how are things in Sri Lanka?
The sweetest three-letter poem
Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership
The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked
Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna
Awaiting arrivals unlike any other
Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles
Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth
The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara
Some play music, others listen
Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn
I am at Jaga Food, where are you?
On separating the missing from the disappeared
And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)
The circuitous logic of Tony Muller
Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'
Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist
Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses
Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced
Some stories are written on the covers themselves
A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature
Landcapes of gone-time and going-time
The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie
So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?
There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords
A song of terraced paddy fields
Of ants, bridges and possibilities
From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva
Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse
Who did not listen, who's not listening still?
If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain
The world is made for re-colouring
No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5
Visual cartographers and cartography
Ithaca from a long ago and right now
Lessons written in invisible ink
The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'
The interchangeability of light and darkness
Sisterhood: moments, just moments
Chess is my life and perhaps your too
Reflections on ownership and belonging
The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha
Signatures in the seasons of love
To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows
Fragrances that will not be bottled
Colours and textures of living heritage
Countries of the past, present and future
Books launched and not-yet-launched
The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains
Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace
The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville
Live and tell the tale as you will
Between struggle and cooperation
Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions
Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers
Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills
Serendipitous amber rules the world
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