It was a dark, rainy night at the Chelawat house in the month of July. All family was watching television but Ira was missing.
“It has to be here somewhere” Ira thought to herself as she quietly searched the books in her grandmother’s trunk.
She belonged to a family of ayurvedic practitioners with various formulae passed to them down generations.
“She always keeps it here” she said to herself as she searched for a particular book. “There it is!” Ira let out a silent cry as she found what she was looking for.
It was an old book that had a little green fairy with four wings and a small wand drawn on its cover page with ‘Tooth fairy’ written in golden letters below. It was the same notebook that Ira had seen her granny refer to so many times while making her toothpaste. No wonder her teeth were perfect and white!
“Finally i can get my tooth back” she said to herself as her tongue rolled to search for her missing tooth inside her mouth. She steals the book out from her granny’s room and keeps it safely inside her cloth tent next to her baby brother’s crib.
After everyone retires to their rooms to sleep and her 6 month old brother has been put to bed by mom, Ira slips into her cloth tent.
She opens the tooth fairy’s book and her little finger scrolls down the index. The little seven year old’s pupils dilate as she finds what she was looking for. the “Tooth fairy paste – page 32”
As she silently turns the pages making sure not to wake Amu, She gets a little diappointed on reaching page 32.
To protect the secret of family formulae the ingredients of tooth fairy paste were written in riddles!
“Tooth Fairy Paste”
Ingredients –
50 ml of nectar from a thousand flowers to give the teeth strength
100 grams of flower from the creator of universe to recreate your teeth
25 ml of the purest form of water to sow the seed of tooth in the socket
“I’m done” Ira thinks to herself. “where in the world would i get these ingredients?”.
“No Ira, think hard it shouldnt be that difficult.”
As she reads the ingredients things start to become clear to her.
“Nectar from a thousand flowers must mean Honey!” She jumps in joy on deciphering the first clue. She runs to the kitchen and gets 50ml Honey.
“Creator of the universe is brahma and he has a brahmakamal!” Yes! 100gm of brahamkamal powder! She peeps inside granny’s room and gets the jar of the brahmkamal powder. She adds 100gm into the honey and mixes.
Now for the last ingredient – “Purest form of water to sow the seed of tooth…. well that’s easy – Rainwater!”
She jumps in joy as she collects 25ml rainwater (July rains) from outside and adds it to her paste.
“Phew, this should bring my tooth back!” she says to herself as she applies the tooth fairy paste on the empty socket.
As she goes to bed and drifts into her sleep she dreams about the winged tooth fairy on the old notebook.
The next morning Ira is woken up by the sound of birds chirping in her window. Her tongue rolls in search of her lost tooth and lo! and behold! The tooth is back where it was! She is wide awake and happily jumps out of the bed shouting “Granny! Granny! My tooth is back.”
As she is jumping in joy, Amu her 6 month old brother awakens and starts to cry out loud. She rushes to console him and a shriek comes out of her mouth…..!!
Her little 6 month old brother had a whole set of teeth! all 28 of them! As he cried vehemantly she got a little scared looking at him! What happened here?!
As Ira looks on her crib she realises that after applying the paste she had left it in the crib and as it tasted of honey Amu had licked all the left over paste and grown teeth.
As granny and Ira’s mom rush in to console a crying Amu, they are taken aback at the sight of it all! Mom almost fainted and had to be grabbed by granny.
It didn’t take much time for granny to realise what Ira had done!
“Don’t worry child, i will make an antidote for Amu and get him back to normal”, she said in her comforting voice.
Later that day, granny made the paste and applied it to Amu’s gums to resorb his teeth. As a punishment for all this, Ira’s tooth was resorbed too.
That night Ira prayed to god that she was thankful that everything finally ended peacefully. She now understood that nature should not be meddled with and things happen in their time and are to be accepted as is.
As she closed her eyes to think of the tooth fairy she felt a sharp bite on her leg. “Oucchh…” she jumped tosee what had bitten her, and saw a mosquito with two big white teeth glistening fly by…”
“Granny! hellllppppp!”.
