Dental appointment

On Hindu-Moslem violence among the Viceroy's servants: "Like Glasgow on a Saturday night!"--Viceroy's House

"Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write!  How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears..."--On the Road

Yesterday I had a dental appointment to replace a filling that got dislodged.  It turned out that to get O.D.S.P. to pay for my checkup two weeks before, I'd brought them the receipt from the wrong month--June instead of September.

Back when O.D.S.P. said I'd be getting a dental card, I thought that meant something you put in your wallet, but it's actually in the monthly receipt they send you.  I must have thrown away September because to me it just seemed one more receipt to clutter up my room.  But I brought them the receipts for July and October, and I hope that's good enough. (Do they think there'd be a two-month gap in my coverage?)

Last night I saw Viceroy's House, about the partition of India and Pakistan, at Canada Square as a History Meetup event. (I'd meant for us to see Victoria and Abdul, but its release got delayed a week.) 

The film increased my sympathy for Lord Mountbatten, who hadn't been told that Churchill and Jinnah had already cut a deal to partition India--he was the fall guy somewhat.  If Congress had let Pakistan take all of Punjab and Bengal, instead of dividing the two states, partition would have been simpler; would it have meant less violence? (Much of the panic and violence resulted from people being uncertain which nation they'd end up in.) At any rate, Pakistan/ Bangladesh would have enjoyed greater diversity, and India still would have been huge.  Nice to see Michael Gambon and Simon Callow in the supporting cast.

Today I picked up Jack Kerouac's On the Road at Oakwood library. I've also been reading Xenophobe's Guide to the Danes.