FEBRUARY 5, MONDAY

FIRST DAY IN DELHI

I am staying in the Master Guest House where I have stayed a number of times before with Kathe and Elke and Todd and Susie. Traveling alone as an old man it is nice to have a comfortable place to stay, but most of all a familiar place where I have a friend. For years Uschi’s husband was a larger than life figure with all kinds of enthusiasms. He and Uschi had turned the house into a museum with all kinds of Indian artwork and images of the Gods. I always looked forward to seeing him. And then last year when we stayed here we found out that he had died unexpectedly some months earlier. Now Uschi is running the place herself and this month is doing extensive renovations which they had planned to do together. So there is no dining area and the kitchen is up on the roof in the meditation room until the renovations are completed. There will also be a small elevator, or in Indian parlance, a lift in the new and improved Master Guest House.

For years when I came with students we stayed in Pahar Ganj, the sleazy, hippie, armpit of Delhi where the rooms were $5 or $10 a night and the meals cheap. But this 86 year old can’t do that any more and the Master Guest House is home to me when I visit.

So today I found myself in Delhi and at 11 I set out to do errands on my way to see my dentist at 3. First I bought the equivalent of Paxlovid, which I can’t get in the United States without first proving that I have Covid 19 and getting a doctor’s prescription. But when in Montevideo I got Covid and couldn’t get Paxlovid. So in India where I don’t need a doctor’s prescription I bought Paxzen, the Indian generic equivalent, so I am ready for my third round of Covid, which I, in spite of being ready, hope to avoid.

Then I went to The Shop, which has beautiful Indian handmade items. I went partly because they have beautiful things and partly because Kathe like going there over the years and so did my daughter Susie. I bought a beautiful mug, which I do on every trip to India so I am getting a collection of Shop mugs and also bought a round table cloth.

And then I had lunch at Saravana Bhavan, my very favorite Indian restaurant (a chain) where you can get a thali, a round aluminum plate with 12 little bowls with a great variety of curries including two Indian desserts with a bowl of ice cream and cut fruit as the final dish along with three puries and a bowl of rice. It was delicious and more than I could eat for 345 rupees, about $4.

Susie and I went to Saravana Bhavan in New York last summer and I have been to Saravana Bhavans in Paris and London and Frankfurt. There are a number o Saravana Bhavans across the United States and around the world, almost always where there are high concentrations of Indians, who are their target clientele, not non Indians. The Delhi Saravana Bhavan always has a long waiting line outside and few Westerners inside.

And then I went to my dentist, Dr. Ashish Kakar, in Masjid Moth, Greater Kailash 2 (Greater heaven). I had gotten an abscess that really hurt on a rear tooth a month and a half ago. My Asheville dentist said it was a goner, but he refused to touch it, offering to refer me to a dental surgeon. I had been to a dental surgeon once before to see how much he would charge to snap in a crown on a completed dental implant. He was going to charge me $600 for ten minutes work. I had no idea what a dental surgeon would charge to remove a tooth that my dentist wanted no part of (and I learned was difficult and painful to do). I didn’t want to find out what he would charge, but I’m guessing a lot more than $600. So I decided to do what had worked before when I had an abcess in India. I took doxycycline, an antibiotic, also prescribed to prevent malaria which calm my abcess until I got home. I asked my doctor to prescribe it and I started taking it way before I needed to and nursed the tooth along until I could get to Delhi. Today I got the sore tooth removed, very, very, very painfully over 45 minutes as I writhed in the chair and was admonished to not pull away and to keep my mouth wide open. I was first given two shots to numb the pain but while he snapped off pieces of the tooth as he went down each root with what seemed like an ice pick, whatever effect the painkillers had, vanished. Finally, but not finally, when I thought it could go on no longer he said, well, I’ve removed the first root. And on we went. He knew I had tears in my eyes and was in pain, but he said that he was trying to avoid giving me a block, whatever a block is, maybe because blocks can kill an 86 year old, but the pain was getting close to killing me anyway. He had already offered to do two jobs at once while I was in the chair and to give me an implant where the tooth had been. That took only another 20 minutes and was less painful. And then, except for sitting with an ice pack on my jaw for an hour under observation, I was done, but with the understanding that now I would have to return to India sometime after three months so that he could snap a crown on the implant.

But the good news is that I am being forced to come to India again in the near future, an excuse that has worked for the last 15 years when I’ve come every other year and gotten my teeth fixed. And the other good news is that for $1150 I have had both the tooth removed, that in Asheville would have cost at least $650 to remove, plus saving an additional $5000 that it would have cost in nearby Oteen at Affordable Dentures to have an implant. So this trip has saved me tons of money.

And now, as the pain has continued finally to subside, and I am eating a soft meal of rice and curry and dal with chapatis, Uschi has sent me a hot water bottle to keep me warm under three blankets during the chilly night, after weeks of steamy Sri Lankan nights when I either lay in hot dampness or couldn’t control the air conditioner and froze with only a sheet, no blankets in Sri Lanka, to cover me, using my down jacket to try and keep warm.