Short Story: The Lesion of Dr. Lahiri By Dwaipayan Bose

In this short story, Dwaipayan Bose shares an engaging read featuring teeth, dentists, and a tooth fairy that promises to make you relive the nightmares of being on a dentist’s chair.

Like every other kid on this planet, Rinku Dhar hated his orthodontist. “Don’t have sweets!”, “Brush for three minutes, not less”, “Aim the toothbrush at a 45-degree angle to the gum line” – the 12-year-old did not have much of a problem with the wisdom part of tooth business, but he disliked the way Dr. Arindam Lahiri treated him.

Whenever Rinku spoke, the 54-year-old doctor would look somewhere else or keep his eyes half-closed. Was he listening? Was he dreaming? Was he lost? None could tell for sure as the orthodontist’s eyes followed a trajectory that was divorced from external stimuli. But once a patient would get on that dental chair and open the mouth, the man would dive in like a frogman, eyes and mind fixated on the insides of a human mouth as if it was a kaleidoscope. Or a Monet.