The Heart is in the RIGHT place

My grandmother stayed with us for sometime when I was around 4 yrs old. She was horrified when she found out I was scrawling with my left hand. According to her "Girls should never be seen using their LEFT HAND. It is so shameful!!" It took her some time but she made sure that I used my right hand to write before she left.

And everytime I went on vacation to Kerala, she would ask me which hand I was writing with & I would truthfully tell her "with my right". She would beam with self-satisfaction like as if she stopped a dreadful plague from overcoming me.
What she never realised was that though I used my right hand to write, everything else was done with my left....whether it was cutting veggies, playing badminton or using the mouse. All this I could do with my right hand too....only it would be a degree or two slower.

My best friend Neetu was left-handed thru & thru. Her parents used to relate to me the tough time they had, trying to make her eat with her right hand. When a teacher tried to make her write with her right hand, her mother who is a doctor had a talk with the teacher & told her not to force the child's into anything. When Neetu's cousins used to tease us with "SouthPaw"......we, not knowing the meaning & pride not permitting us to ask, thought it was some bad word to put left handers down.

All through my school years I met a lot of right handed & a few left-handed kids but nobody used both. I often wondered what category I fell under........... whether I was right handed or left handed.

As I grew older a lot of friends told me I was ambidextrous....though the term sounded grand, heart of hearts I didnt agree with them....well, for one ambidextrous people are supposed to be able to write with both hands, which I couldn’t.

A student at the Multimedia Centre I worked in brought me a fat book on left-handers & I went thru it out of curiosity[back then, Google was not a click away]. More than half the book concentrated on emphasising how left-handers suffered severe prejudice during the 18th & 19th century, how it was often beaten out of people and they were shunned by Society resulting in fewer marrying & reproducing.

How traumatic really…..imagine thinking that you are a freak simply because you are left handed!!!!!!!!

And did you know, humans aren't the only species who have left-handed individuals. The equivalent of lefties have also been observed in the animal world.

Through the ages, the severity of reaction directed towards left-handed people has diminished but people all over still associate it with awkwardness and clumsiness. The English expression "having two left feet", the Dutch expression "twee linkerhanden hebben", the German expression "zwei linke Hände haben", the Bulgarian expression "dve levi ratse" and the Czech expression "Mít obě ruce levé" ("to have two left hands") all mean being clumsy.

Ofcourse there are a lot of advantages to being left-handed. Many a time it has aided me in escaping doing my share of work especially at parties & get-togethers……one look at the awkwardly held knife or spoon in my left hand & women will snatch the implement out of my hands in half concealed alarm & impatience. Carefully hiding my elation, I put on a sheepish grin & vanish from there with a valid excuse.

Did you know, left-handers are said to be generally more intelligent, better looking, imaginative and multi-talented than right handers - based on discussions among members of the Left-Handers Club! :)

Jokes apart, even today no-one has come up with a definitive reason as to WHY some people are left-handed, but about 13% of the population around the world are, and it is thought to be genetic ‘cause it definitely runs in families.

But finally……being left-handed or right-handed doesn’t really matter does it???? We all travel a path where our Thoughts & Actions make all the difference to the way we handle the journey called Life. Whether we use our right hand or the left to do it, is not relevant at all.