On The Other Hand…

Parading around with the bones of my left wrist in unhappy disjunction, and with the University exams just around the corner, I am met often with the following words of consolation: “Thank God you’re not left-handed”. These remarks got me thinking. What if I really was left-handed? Are left-handers at an advantage over right-handers or vice-versa? Who’s more intelligent? What’s been the left-handers place in history? A very rough estimate says that 13% of the world’s population is left-handed. Certain idiosyncrasies arise in our society from this disparity between so-called southpaws and right-handers. A classic and ubiquitous example would be the classroom chairs with desks attached. Those of us who experienced these will no doubt recall with great amusement the cack-handed scrambling over to the one or two desks configured for lefties. In addition, there was the tricky part of walking down the desk aisles and then realizing that they had to walk around — or climb over — the desk in order to sit in it. The code of table-etiquette was written keeping only right-handers in mind, and American lefties are up in arms about having to change gears on their cars with their weaker hand. Of course, this is also a problem for us Indian right-handers! But the quirks of society apart, I decided to deeper delve into the issues of “handedness”. For a long time, science developed a theory known as the “mirror effect.” This theory states that a right-hander thinks with the leftside of their brain while the opposite is true for the left-handed person. However, in the past few years, scientists have discovered that while right-handed people are indeed dominated by the left hemisphere of their brain, left-handed people use both sides of their brain more evenly. Some attribute this to the fact that the facilities of language and speech are controlled by the left-side of the brain and that just about everyone, no matter which hand they write with, must use the right side of the brain to perform these communication functions. Therefore left-handers have increased use of the right-side of their brain. What a bonus! While the above abstract seems to indicate that left-handers tend to use their grey matter more than right-handers, this minority also holds the upper hand in sport, and sportsmen are notoriously thick. Consider cricket, the percentage of left-handers in India is also roughly 13%. However, out of the 16-man one-day squad that went to Australia, no less than eight bowled or batted with their left hand. That’s half the team, and bear in mind that Zaheer Khan wasn’t there. And it’s not just the Indian team. When Australian fast bowler Brad Williams was asked about the reason for his non-inclusion in the side for a match, his laconic reply was, “I bowl with the wrong arm, mate.” Williams had been overlooked in favour of left-armer Nathan Bracken and made his feelings towards the sinistral plain as a pikestaff. In football as well, a leftfooted player is considered a prized asset. A smaller talent pool means that left-sided sportspersons can get into teams while rightsided players of similar caliber may not get a chance. The world’s disdain for lefties has considerable historical background. The ancient tradition of shaking hands with the right is well known to be an offer of peace. Presumably, if both parties shook hands with the right then they would not be carrying daggers behind their backs, because it would be too difficult to stab with the left hand. However, this was of no help to the left-handed Julius Caesar- he famously had terrible luck with daggers. The ancient Romans did their bit to contribute towards discrimination against lefties (besides stabbing poor Julius); they gave us the Latin word “sinister”. While in modern English, the word “sinister” suggests an evil or ominous force or motive, in Latin “sinister” simply means “on the left”. On the contrary, “dexter” is Latin for “right”. Today, “dexterous” means well skilled in the hands. The positive and negative connotations of the Latin equivalents of “left” and “right” clearly indicate that the Graeco-Roman masses didn’t particularly care for left-handers. This dislike was passed on to the French, who describe someone that’s clumsy as being “gauche” (which means “left”). As with Latin, the opposite of “gauche” is “adroit” — which basically means the same thing as dexterous. Some researchers have also indicated that southpaws have a shorter lifespan than the right-sided majority (66 years vs. 75 years). Lefties would refer you to the old cliché, “The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” History isn’t all bad for lefthanders, though. It was probably a left-handed Egyptian king who decreed that his subjects wear the wedding band on their left hand. Among their many strange beliefs, Ancient Egyptians were convinced that the “vena amori” or “vein of love” ran directly from the heart to the third finger on the left hand. Please bear in mind though, that this is a civilization that venerated cockroaches as a symbol of the sun (actually it was the scarab beetle, but who cares, a bug is a bug!). Their beliefs are bound to be a bit dodgy. So, will we witness a day when people start going for “sidechange” (if surgical advances continue at the same rate of knots, who knows?) operations, very much like the “sex-change” operations of today? The world may be right-handed but it is run by lefties, one out of every three presidents is a left-hander. In 1992, the “right-handed” American public could not even choose a right-handed candidate. George Bush (Sr.), Bill Clinton and Ross Perot were all left-handed. While it would be jumping the gun to say that left-handers have it all their own way, it would be jumping the whole artillery to decide to have your “handedness” changed. While the grass may look greener on the other side, and lefthanders will tell anyone who’ll listen what fine chaps they are, right-handers can always be secure in the knowledge that are in the majority. Stoicism (and mass-produced goods, but that’s hitting below the belt) is the only way to deal with the clear advantage that left-handers have. And as for myself, in my own present (and reduced) circumstances, all I can fervently say is, “Thank god I’m not left-handed.”

Abhimanyu Gupta

 I Maths