Dental fire sparks new approach: Paul Williams tells the story of an Indian dentist who saw his surgery razed to the ground.

MODERN DENTISTRY is virtually painless, claims Bangalore dentist Ravindra Rao. 'So long as the dentist is the kind to whom the patient matters,' he adds. Eyes twinkling with his characteristic humour, he cites a colleague who displayed a board in his surgery for all his patients to see: 'Pain is a question of mind over matter--I don't mind and you don't matter!' Rao says that his approach to his patients underwent a fundamental shift after he met people whose lives had been transformed through their contacts with Initiatives of Change (IC). 'I perceived that my role should primarily be as a "care-giver"--to relieve pain and meet a patient's need.

I came to see them as people rather than as patients.' Many are now numbered among his, and his wife Jayashree's, closest friends. A catastrophe at work marked a turning point in his own journey of faith. In 1993 a major tire broke out in the laboratory attached to his surgery. It swept through the premises, destroying every piece of equipment. 'Jayashree and I were shattered," he recalls. 'As I surveyed the clinic I had nurtured and painstakingly built up over 15 years reduced to ashes, I felt all the strength draining out of me and I nearly collapsed.'.