Reader's Digest Australia Feb/Mar 2026

CHONA KASINGER/THE NEW YORK TIMES Markers of Dr. Merchant’s email persona are scarce in her real life. Her dental practice bears no mention of the tooth fairy. She describes herself on Instagram only as a “kid’s dentist” and a lover of yoga and travel. Many of her own patients don’t even know about her alter ego. “There’s something amazing about doing something for someone, and they don’t know who you are,” she says. “This came from the universe; it came from nowhere.” Dr. Merchant didn’t have the tooth fairy as a child growing up in India, but she did have pen pals. This isn’t so different. Sometimes, when she’s in a particularly good mood, she answers children’s questions, such as: What does she look like? And what does she do with all the teeth she collects? She has a few stock answers: The tooth fairy looks like a fairy. She gives extra teeth to babies with no teeth, or sometimes she’ll use them to build a tooth castle. There are parents she has heard from for years, who write to her every time one of their kids loses a new tooth, or who thank her for spending her free time humoring strangers. But it’s rare that she can get to know an actual child without their parents as intermediaries. That’s why a recent email from Piya Garg, a 23-year-old living in London, moved her to tears. Garg had been on vacation with her family in Singapore in the summer of 2008 when the front tooth that she’d been wiggling for weeks finally fell out. But amid all the excitement—and all the blood—the tooth fell into a storm drain outside their hotel’s restaurant. Garg, then 6 years old, was devastated. Her father sent an email to the tooth fairy, trying a few different email domains and hedging his bets, with a message fromhis daughter, asking that she be reimbursed for her tooth when she returned home to Hong Kong, and in the local currency: reader ’ s digest 10 February/March 2026 My tooth fell out in Singapore and I can’t find it—I hope you have already taken it. We will return to Hong Kong tomor- row. Can I please request you to give me my tooth fairy money in HK and in HKD? Thanks ever so much. Dr. Merchant replied, and the little girl got her money. Seventeen years later, on the day that Garg got her wisdom teeth taken out, she was reflecting on a long adoles- cence of dental drama: braces, palate expanders, and now a surgery she had been dreading. She was thinking about that funny email she had received from the tooth fairy when she was a child. She figured this wisdom tooth would be the last tooth that ever “fell” out. So after the extraction, she sent a note to the same email address, hoping it was still active. She thanked Dr. Mer- chant for reassuring her about her front tooth all those years ago: 17 years ago, you wished me a happy growing up, and now at 23, I’mexcited to report that it definitely has been :) Dr. Merchant replied a few minutes later. Thank you for reminding me that kindness, no matter how small, leaves a lasting impact on the world. I REALLY needed that reminder today. Love, The Tooth Fairy Real-Life Avengers On Feb. 18, 2025, astronomers determined that an asteroid 130 to 300 feet long had a 3.1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032. Never had an asteroid of such dangerous dimensions stood such a high chance of striking the planet. Then, just as quickly as history was made, experts declared that the danger had passed. On Feb. 24, 2025, asteroid trackers issued the all clear: Earth would be spared. But during those six days, planetary defenders all over the world crewed their battle stations. A sprawling network of global astronomers mapped, planned for and, finally, dismissed the asteroid—all under the tightest of timelines and with the highest of stakes. Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, said, “I’ve had to cancel an appointment saying, ‘I cannot come—I have to save the planet.’” MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW THE NEW YORK TIMES (JULY 14, 2025), COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY. readersdigest.com.au 11 Inspiration