Monday, May 14, 2007

Gum here to revitalize

January 2002

I confess to this, I have never been a fan of chewing gums. Personally, I could never take a fancy to something which gets itself rid of 99.97% of all taste and sweetness some 0.3 seconds after its inside the mouth, leaving the chewer to spend the next three hours vainly trying to extract the remaining 0.03% of the leftover sucrose. Sometimes this process goes on for hours until the man (women thankfully don't chew much except for girls with a twisted sense of feminism) in one weak moment of frustrated chewing, turns into a vicious anti-social animal and sticks the gum right on top of the nearest available toilet seat.

Lee Kwan Yew must have suffered quite a few of these chewing gums in Singapore, sticking happily at inconvenient places before he would have decided, enough is enough and banned it from the entire island. Nevertheless, this has resulted in a huge boom in the gum industry in the neighboring rubber-rich Malaysia. I suspect that any given moment thousands of Singaporians are walking over the causeway through the Straits of Malacca to spend a few hours on their weekly quota of chewing gums; not for forget sticking it later at all the public toilets out there in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

I make it a point to carefully check toilet seats in public places before committing myself to any of them. That being the case, my biggest peeve concerning chewing gums is not the sticky toilet seat issue, but the kind of obscene (I don't think there is a better word) gestures people make at public while relishing their spearmints or whatever. Had this been a world without chewing gums, these gesticulations performed by the man on the street, would have been taken as downright social insults. Wars would have broken out. China would have been asking US to apologize every fourth hour, while executing some more people for treason.

The great chewing gum afficionados ('Gummers' for short, though I'd prefer something more accurate like 'Bummers') make it a point to roll the infernal thing from one end of their mouth all the way to the center and then over to the other end, like one of those fountains twirling around and watering the lawn equally everywhere. The overall effect of this is quite gross, especially when the gummers begin to speak with the gum in the mouth running from one end to the other. The gum, all the while, keeps threatening to come out into the free world (where it can plonk itself on the nearest available toilet seat).

The other day a friend of mine offered me a gum, I'm sure with the noblest of intentions. So, in the noblest manner I refused, politely pointing it out to him that I find chewing this thing obscene (as I said earlier, no better word yet). This being a matter close to my heart, I got carried away and went on to add that given an option, I'd round up all the gum chewers, tape their mouths shut with three rolls of adhesive tape each and scrawl "DANGER: DO NOT REMOVE" on top of that heap. Actually, this is more of a wishlist. Considering my current physical condition ("a few kilos less here, a few inches less there, I'd be fit as a fiddle", that's my mission statement), I instead just say "No, thank you".

He was scandalized by my response to what he thought was a touching gesture of offering the last remaining gum from a pack of five. This resulted in me being subjected to some intense knowledge-transfer (or unsolicited download, in the Internet parlance) as to why I should come out of my primitive mindset and begin chewing these gums at a rate of 16 hours per day, not including sleeping hours. And why in fact, everyone in the world should buy gums in large quantities and spend their waking hours chewing it with gusto.

The gum therapy theory (roughly) thus spaketh... Every day we eat food using only our side teeth (If you want to know whether they are called molars, incisors or canines, please visit your nearest dentist, I don't have the faintest clue). So the side teeth gets plenty of exercise mashing up our food and thus the gums there become, to use an earlier expression, 'fit as a fiddle'. After this, they all turn into musicians in a fiddle concert, breaking world records for fitness. No, seriously, they all develop cavities big enough for golf balls to relax comfortably, due to an overdose of chocolates.

Coming back, while the side gums play fiddle flexing their biceps, the chaps out there at the front would all be smiling and displaying themselves during horrendous artificial polite conversations (inversely proportional to job security and self-esteem). This turns them into something as tough as a wafer biscuit. Thus, devoid of their muscles, the gums soon turn into weak good-for-nothing wimps.

Here is where the Spearmint makes its grand appearance. According to the Gum therapists (or 'Gummers' - essentially, people who can give long political speeches while chewing three gums at any point in time), you should take a chewing gum, taste it (for exactly 0.2 seconds: see above to know why) and then start chewing it with your front teeth. Yes, gentlemen, you are supposed to chew it ONLY with your front teeth.

I asked my friend of simple inconveniences like (a) The thickness of the front teeth being just 2mm or thereabouts, what about the high chances you would end up grating your teeth? Wouldn't their current weak situation make them fall like dominoes in a neat row and (b) What about the fact that there is an even higher chance that they would pop out like bread slices from the toaster and land on the listeners shirt collar? I also had other questions ringing in my mind..."What happens if weak teeth fall inside and you end up swallowing them?", "Can I brush my teeth from today onwards?" and so on, but I thought I'll stick to the basics first.

With a reassuring look, my friend, the therapist replied that the answer to my concerns, is of course, practice, practice and more practice. As one of my collegues said in one of his technical presentations, repetition a.k.a practice is the mother of something, father of something else and an architect of something other than these two. Coming back, with an earnest and sympathetic face, my gummer friend advised me to immedietly walk down to the nearest convenience store, buy my supplies for the next 3 months (which at this rate, would require a couple of pick-up trucks and may be an extra trolley too) and start practising. The alternative to this for me, incidentally, would be to live a life of lasting shame with all my front teeth missing.

In fact, my gummer pal told me that he is a neo-convert who took to this therapy just three months back. Today, as he looks back at his efforts, he can only feel his heart swelling with justifiable pride at the tremendous strides made by his frontal gums in their quest for enduring strength and lasting peace of mind. In fact, such is his confidence today that he wouldn't mind climbing on a stage and singing "Smoke on the water, fire in the sky", if only someone told him what the rest of the lyrics were. I personally would support the Chinese method and try him for treason, if I have to listen to THAT song even once more (as well as any of the several other songs which come under the category of 'College Classics' the abbreviation for 'songs so many times sickeningly overplayed that its guaranteed to kill brain cells instantly and make ignoramuses do irrational acts while feeling that they are ACTUALLY rock fans)

As for making my own nuclear stockpile of Wrigleys, I am afraid I didn't do any such thing and instead, decided to invest on 'less healthy' stuff like cartons of apple juice and milk. Meanwhile, if you see merits in the gummers argument, you are free to please go and wipe out the chewing gum supplies at the nearest convenience store. Just remember to spare me during your practice sessions. Else, when I finally get that undetectable sting ray gun, you would be right there in my list of usual suspects. Don't tell me I didn't warn you then.

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