The Art of Brushing

The human population can be very easily classified into two very divided sects. One who take their health very seriously and the other who do not give a rat’s backside to it. What can be comfortably ascertained is that every single person of the first kind and more than 99 percent of the second kind brush at least once a day. I sincerely believe in standing up and being counted but as regards to this matter I am a party with the decision taken by the majority of the human population. I do brush once a day. Why then am i dedicating an entire article to it? Patient people will find out at the end of this flibbertigibbet’s prose.

When I was a kid and still learning how to brush, my dear old mother used to shove a brush in my hand beautifully equipped with a generous strand of toothpaste and encourage me to exercise my talent at this fundamental of human hygiene. The results were disastrous. Coupled with my obvious lack of ability to self brush was my inexplicable liking for the taste of that particular toothpaste. This resulted in me swallowing most of the froth that was supposed to ensue after a reasonable 5 minute workout of the hand and mouth. At the end of these interesting 300 odd seconds, my mother would ask me to spit out the remnants from my mouth but there would be none. I was like a prodigious magician who could simply vanish toothpaste foam once it was in my mouth. It took my mother a week to deduce what was happening. Upon later investigation, she enlightened me as to the cause of the delay. She could not even get herself to imagine that some moron would actually swallow the paste. She had been of the opinion that i hated brushing and with incredible sleight of hand I would wash away the paste from the brush itself when nobody was looking. Anyways, after the enlightenment happened, she resolved to spread the message a la The Buddha. She told me in no uncertain terms that paste was bad and that it was not to be swallowed but to be spit out.

Eventually, her message did get through and I started spitting toothpaste foam out. After nine years of happy brushing, a dental hygiene advertisement appeared on television for the first time. This advertisement shook my very basics like a hurricane sweeps through and leaves nothing behind. It advocated a vertically oscillating motion for the brush. I still remember the words. They were something in the form of “Upar Neeche, Neeche Upar, Up and down, Down and up”. I had forever been of the opinion that the way to go was horizontal. That definitely made more logical sense, didn’t it? You could cover more surface area with one simple stroke. Why would you go up and down with your brush when your teeth were all aligned horizontally one next to the other? The advertisement conveniently failed to answer this question. On the very day that i decided to treat the entire episode as trash, my grandmother and my mother simultaneously asked me to pay close attention to that irritating message of public awareness.

And so, there was another change in my brushing technique. The horizontal motion was replaced by the vertical one. But it was not the technique that bothered me. In my small lifetime, I had observed a lot of people brushing. They did it with so much energy and a sort of careless flamboyance. They could go around the entire place in circles with the brush exercise continuing in the mouth without a single care about the froth falling from the insides of their mouths. It seemed as if they were really looking forward to the day that was to begin with all its glory. As is clear from this piece of prose, I have always been a pathetic brusher. I used to stand at the basin for five painfully long minutes before the ordeal actually ended. Secretly, I envied every single person who could walk, talk, dance and entertain while actually brushing. I did not have the heart to ask these great men how they started their day on such a glorious note. I mean, what would i actually ask them? Umm, I’m eighteen but I would like to learn your brushing technique. Will you teach me? Even I have enough self respect to not do something like that.

Then, something happened, that altered the state of my brushing affairs forever. I went to a hostel. At this beautiful hostel, where i spent the good part of a year, there were only two basins for the entire floor. Effectively, the basin to student ratio was something like twenty six to one. Add to this, the complication of submitting an assignment, appearing for a test or presenting a seminar in the very immediate future, or in some very sad cases, the unhealthy combination of two or more of the above factors, and you are totally screwed. In these pathetically dire circumstances, one can do nothing but learn how to brush properly.

It was an absolute miracle. You cannot remember the exact moment you fall asleep. A lot of complicated thought patterns circulate in your tired brain and before you are conscious of what you are thinking, you are fast asleep. This happened exactly like that. I did not even realise that I had started brushing in the way I had always dreamt of brushing. I was reading the newspaper one morning when I gathered that I was also brushing my teeth. It was a surreal feeling. Close introspection told me that I had been doing these particular activities in glorious harmony for quite a few days. It seemed as if my hand was in auto-pilot mode. The morning seemed so beautiful now that I could brush and admire it. The days ahead were all mine. I was raring to go…