Monday Morning Greetings 2026 #40 – The Absolute Tooth II: A Medical Pilgrimage

I was a bit awestruck by the facility. Above my chair, the dentist’s workstation had a computer screen where he could carefully monitor my root canal, using a small camera that he occasionally positioned beside my mouth. He was repairing the mistake made during my last visit to my dentist in New Jersey, and the facility today was such an upgrade. Instead of requiring multiple visits to the dentist, he would complete the entire procedure — including making and fitting the highest-grade zirconia ceramic cap — in less than two hours in one visit. My dentist explained everything so carefully and with such authority that I trusted him. But why was I so awestruck? I was in Vṛndāvana just a minute from MVT, at Lord Krishna’s Multispecialty Dental Clinic. Who expected that? It was certainly a far cry from the first dentist I had seen in Vraja fifty years ago: a simple man in a lungi, sitting on the floor alongside a shop in Loi Bazaar, with a rusted quart can for rinsing one’s mouth next to a…