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Very few places in the world can rival Jaipur, Rajasthan, India for the variety of human transport on the road from Jaipur’s airport to its center city. Through the years I’ve traveled that road many times to teach cosmetic dentistry in the fabled “Pink City.”

On that airport road I’ve seen every manner of human transportation that has existed over the last 20,000 years - people walking, people riding on elephants, donkeys and camels; people on bikes and motorcycles, Arabs (from their clothing) in caravans of Mercedes limousines, lots of conventional cars, taxis, buses and three wheeled cabs; rickshaws, Pedi cabs, carts pulled by horses, carts pulled by donkeys, carts pulled by water buffalo, and even carts pulled by goats. My five-year-old daughter seemed surprised that that I did not mention magic carpets when I told her this tale. There was also a fellow walking on the road with an entire household of furniture perched on his head. Not possible, you say? Then you haven’t been on the airport road to Jaipur. I also learned an important rule of the road – traffic moves as fast as the slowest method of getting from one place to another, in this case- bare feet.

Arundhati Roy, in her novel, “The God of Small Things,” talks of India as being a most unusual civilization, the oldest continuous culture on the planet. Since lots of those barefoot guys walking on the road in Jaipur are talking into cell phones, she has said, ”India is the only place on the planet that exists in the 20th century and 20 thousand years ago at exactly the same time. “

"Big Apple” woodcut, 12” by 12” by Jeff Golub-Evans

How Celebrities Get to Us
I was reminded of Jaipur’s airport road this week as a New York businessman arrived at the New York Center for Cosmetic Dentistry in a black Cadillac Escalade stretch limo. I had never seen one of those, not even on Jaipur’s airport road, and I remarked that it had been a long time since I had seen a uniformed driver in America with a chauffeur’s hat. It started me thinking about all the means of human transport that our patients use to get to the New York Center for Cosmetic Dentistry. We treat lots of regular folks who take trains, buses, taxis, private cars and planes from near and far, but what about the celebrated crowd? What about those folks in the public eye, the celebrities in People Magazine we treat? How do Regis and football’s Tom Brady get to us? By taxi?

Hugh Jackman is People Magazine's "World's Sexiest Man"

The Answers:

Our icons of beauty like Paulina Porizkova, Padma Lakshmi and Bridget Moynahan, all at one time downtown girls, would get uptown to us by taxi or private car, though I once did watch Paulina speed away on her motorcycle. We’ve also seen lots of models and actors on bikes, scooters and motorbikes. Hugh Jackman, an icon of beauty in his own right, takes the subway, sporting a camouflaging goofy hat and often with a child in tow. (People Magazine recently named him the World’s Sexiest Man. Our staff would agree.) Harry, a retired brigadier general, glides into the waiting room and up the stairs on rollerblades. Private equity bankers and hedge fund managers sometimes have his and her cars and drivers, and we have had the occasion of both the husband and wife in our office at the same time while their two drivers are waiting outside schmoozing. Wayne Newton has piloted his own plane from Las Vegas to Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey to get to us. Kim Catrall, the Yankees’ Jason Giambi and Jorge Posada and other famous locals walk a few blocks to our office. And yes, Regis and Tom Brady take taxis, but none can rival Usher for sheer visual impact the first time he arrived at the office.

Usher arrives in style

Usher’s Vehicles
One day Usher’s mom, who is also his manager, called to say that he needed some treatment and could be at the NYCCD later that afternoon. He was in town rehearsing for a starring role in the Broadway musical, “Chicago,” and had just garnered another set of Grammy Awards. The female staff was so excited to meet him. At 4:30pm we noticed a line of nine black limousines pulling up outside our brownstone on East 71st Street - six Cadillac Escalades and three Lincoln Navigators. The little old ladies in the buildings across the street were hanging out of their windows, craning their necks for a look, assuming that perhaps President George Bush was paying us a visit. Thirty people then spilled out of those vehicles, including five or six really big guys, football-lineman looking guys, guys who looked like they were wearing bulletproof vests under their jackets even if they weren’t. Also spilling out onto the street was a score of beautiful little women in evening dresses and strapped high heels. An advance party of two of the women and one of the burly guys made their way into the office where they politely asked to see the facility, walked into every room, checked a few locked doors, and felt content to go back out and send in the Man. The rest of the tale is private, but suffice it to say that after that introduction, we were surprised to meet such a gracious, well-spoken, demonstrably appreciative young man. In fact, he went beyond that. We have a regulation at the NYCCD, which is that staff is requested not to ask any celebrated clients for their autographs so that they can feel comfortable and protected in our environment. The staff honored that requirement, and no one asked for an autograph. When we completed the work and he was about to leave and join his vehicular entourage, he said “Doesn’t anyone want an autograph?” As the staff excitedly went to retrieve notepads, napkins, post-its and other scraps of paper, Usher calmly used his cell phone to call someone in one of the cars. Soon stacks of Vibe Magazines appeared, each with a picture of the star on the cover. He sat and took the time to personally sign every one of them.

Usher’s Kindness

Even more impressive was that there was a fourteen-year-old girl in a treatment room having her teeth whitened who heard the buzz that Usher was in the building. She was locked into the timing of the lamp, the isolating material and the bleaching gel and was beside herself that she could not move to gaze upon the man whose music she loved. I mentioned to him that a big fan was upset that she couldn’t meet him. He bounded back upstairs and into the treatment room. “How are you doing,” he asked. She garbled beneath the mask and cotton rolls and gel, “Is it really you?” He lifted his sweatshirt to show his famous MTV abs. “It’s me,” he said. As she practically fainted he darted downstairs and outside to his waiting chain of Escalades and Navigators, ready to usher Usher to Philadelphia for a performance that evening.

The next morning a British gentleman arrived for a consultation. I was curious how he had been referred to us. Was it by another patient, or a magazine article, or the Internet? I asked, “How did you get to us,” he answered, “I took the 6 train.”