'Well, that's the last flight out of Delhi' the steward says as we settle into our seats, en route to London and Somerset, where we'd spend three months in lockdown drinking an awful lot of French wine.
The woman next to me is sobbing. Her story is confusing, but she wasn't able to renew her visa in the normal way due to WHO's announcement of the global pandemic, and had to fly back to England. She was leaving her Indian friend (boyfriend?) and son, and her nascent school, which had upset her terribly. I wonder what happened to her - it would have been a very long time before she'd be allowed back to Delhi. She wasn't coping well at all.
Four days before, I'd woken up to the announcement and we immediately booked a flight onwards. In the cafes, travellers were checking phones nervously, alerted of changed flights and panicked messages from relatives at home. Some were young and naively thought they'd wait it out - as old and seasoned travellers we warned them going home might be the safer option. We couldn't get hold of Virgin Atlantic, with who we'd booked flights with months before, and it'd be half a year before we'd get a refund.
That left us with what to do for four days. We were incredibly disappointed, having loved India and looking forward to months of travel there, but we had explored the local area, swum in the Ganges, ate good food and even got doused in colours for Holi. We'd gone to the holy city of Haridwar where I sat in awe for hours watching the mother of rivers drift on by with it's refuse of saris, flowers, and other offerings and discarded human things.
The Australian couple next to us suggested going to the dentist. They'd been coming to the Himalaya for twenty years and always got dental work done in India. My best friend's husband got his entire teeth replaced and she got two teeth replaced the year before. Despite warnings from home, where the West has their bias about dodgy Indian dental work, we thought, well, what else were we going to do until the flight left, and booked ourselves in.
Now first of all, let me tell you I don't normally go to the dentist for a check up, much to my mother's consternation. I can't see the point - if I brush my teeth and take care of them, unless I'm in pain, why would I pay a dude to check my teeth? The last time I got a filling, it cost me $400 bucks, and hurt like hell. I fainted in the chair. Like everyone, I freaking HATE the dentist. Sitting there, jaw aching, the uncomfortable pain in the jaw and neck, trying not to swallow the bits of teeth before they get sucked up by the dental assistant, the numb mouth - ugh. No wonder it makes grown men cry.
But, Jamie had wanted his mouth full of metal filling replaced by amalgum. Remember, he's British, so bad teeth are a matter of birthright. It couldn't hurt asking. I had two metal ones (I'm a child of the 80's) and a few holes I thought I could do with filling. Plus, we could both do with a clean.
The lovely dentist booked us in that Sunday. Jamie had eight fillings and a clean and I had six fillings and a clean. It took about four hours each in the chair. For both of us, it cost $700AUD. A reminder that one filling cost me half that in Australia.
Not only that, she didn't use any anaesthetic. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised. What kind of magic was this? It didn't hurt. Although uncomfortable of course, it wasn't a torture chamber and the whole thing was relatively painless.
I have to say this again. Our entire mouths, two of us, cleaned and filled and all the fillings replaced, no anaethetic, a total of 8 hours for the two of us on a Sunday in a pandemic, $700.
I just hope next time we need dental work there's not a pandemic, and we can fly to India for the pleasure.
How odd it is to look back on that strange time in early 2020, and to think, goodness me, we were in India, and we went to the dentist.
We went to Max White Dental Service - you can find their website here. Highly recommended.
With Love,
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