Rahul still remembers the evening his daughter asked,“Papa, why do you smile without showing teeth?”
It wasn’t a question.It was a mirror.
For years, he’d carried an empty space in his mouth like a secret. A missing molar from a badly done extraction had slowly stolen more than chewing ability. It stole confidence. Expression. Laughter.
Even small joys like biting into corn bhel near Powai Lake became an exercise in avoiding the right side of his mouth.He started adjusting himself everywhere—
how he sat in meetings so people wouldn’t see the gap…how he posed in photos with a tight-lipped grin…how he laughed softly so sound wouldn’t reveal the hollow.
Psychologically, people who are self-conscious about missing teeth begin to withdraw from spontaneous expressions. They overthink moments that were once effortless. Rahul became one of them. But the night his daughter asked that question, something shifted.He wasn’t ashamed anymore. He was tired.
Tired of hiding. Tired of adjusting. Tired of feeling older than he was.
So he opened his laptop and started searching, “Best permanent replacement for missing teeth.”He didn’t know much about implants—just a vague idea that they were something fixed and expensive and probably painful. But he was desperate to reclaim the version of himself before the loss.At Kshine Dental Studio, the first thing he noticed wasn’t the clinic—it was the silence inside his own head.For once, he wasn’t overthinking. He was hopeful.
Dr. Kritika didn’t talk about implants like a dentist. She spoke like someone who understood what a gap in the mouth does to a person’s identity. She gently showed Rahul a 3D model, explaining how an implant acts like a natural root, how it grows with the bone, how it becomes “your tooth” instead of “a replacement.”But the part that hit him most was this line:“You deserve a smile that doesn’t need to hide.”It wasn’t dental education.It was reassurance.
During the small painless procedure, Rahul kept remembering the day his missing tooth first broke his confidence. He remembered work presentations where he avoided eye contact. He remembered office outings where he pretended to not like certain foods because they were hard to chew. He remembered sitting silently while others laughed loudly.As the implant healed, something else healed with it—his sense of self.
The day he got his final crown, he took a selfie.
Not to send it to anyone,but because it was the first time in years he actually wanted to see his own smile.That night, his daughter said:“Papa, you’re smiling with teeth!”And Rahul replied,“Because now I can.”
A single tooth changed nothing—and everything. Not because it looked good.But because it gave him back the freedom to be expressive.If you’ve been hiding your smile too, maybe it’s time to reclaim yourself.