A girl brushing her teeth was mixed in with the children

As usual, I was wandering through a residential neighborhood in Berhampore with a camera in hand when, before long, children began to gather around me. In small-town India, you don’t have to do anything special to attract attention. Simply carrying a DSLR is enough. Cameras here seem to function like insect traps: they don’t even glow, yet they draw children in all the same.

The children stopped in a neat semicircle in front of me and began to watch my every move. Multiple beams of curiosity, all striking at once, made it hard to relax. I had no intention of performing for them, but inevitably my eyes moved from face to face. That was when I noticed one arm among them moving with peculiar regularity. A girl was standing there, brushing her teeth, staring straight at me. She held the toothbrush firmly, as if this were the most natural combination of activities imaginable.

She may not have understood exactly what was happening, but she clearly sensed that something unusual was going on nearby. Even in the middle of brushing her teeth, she must have felt this was not an event to be missed. When our eyes met, she smiled shyly. Her expression changed, but the motion of the toothbrush did not pause for a second. I admired her diligence, though part of me wondered whether the situation really demanded such commitment.

While traveling, I often find myself puzzled by ideas of hygiene that differ from those in Japan. Still, the act of brushing one’s teeth appears to be universal. What is less universal is the setting. In Japan, you rarely see someone brushing their teeth outdoors. Cultural differences, it seems, tend to reveal themselves not in grand rituals, but in these quiet, unguarded moments where no one thinks to explain anything at all..