RIGHT-HANDER vis-à-vis LEFT-HANDER

 From Sampath's Desk: 

RIGHT-HANDER vis-à-vis  LEFT-HANDER

13 August - International Left Handers Day

 

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here is generally a positive bias towards right hand and right leg. Is this right and justified? No, not at all! Majority of people are right-handers with less than 10% an exception. However, being a lefty is neither a boon nor bane - and neither a blessing nor curse - as it shares both advantages and disadvantages. August 13 marks the ‘Lefties Day’.

 

'Handedness' experts say that while the right-handed people have dominant left brain, the lefties have a dominant right brain.

 

There is a belief that left-handers have more strength and are better skilled, talented and equipped for tasks. There is also an assumption that they are better oriented and good at multi-tasking with magnetic memory and a cutting edge in interactive sports and fine arts over their right-handed peers. Whether right or not, the left-handers do baffle the right-handers in sports. In Tennis, servicing of left-handers and in Cricket left-hand bowling are believed to give a tough time to opponents. While facing a southpaw or corrie-fisted, lefties can easily adjust but righties are at a double disadvantage. For they are forced to engage in an asymmetrical battle for which they are poorly prepared as against an opponent who is a dab hand at dealing with this type of asymmetry.

 

Left and right-handed batsmen batting together and their partnership, and bowling operations alternately by the two, are always the preferred and strategic choice in Cricket. Few left-handed players are considered a fairly sought-after lot in team-games. They naturally do stand out as a specialist tool, effective weapon and battery of power/force for a team. 

 

We have shining examples of left-handers having proved their mettle and been successful in their respective sports - Gary Sobers in Cricket and Martina Navratilova in Lawn Tennis. Alert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Barack Obama were left-handers. Lefties do write fast.

 

On the flip side, the Lefties are believed to be more sensitive to criticism and are easily embarrassed, perturbed or provoked, it is believed. Lefties are quick to get angry, it seems, showing inability at times to balance processing of their emotions, psychologists say.

 

However, whether the cognitive, mental, and physical differences lefties have as against righties actually make a real-world difference in people's lives is still up for debate with no conclusive proof emerging to decide one way or the other.

 

It is considered auspicious and emotionally comfortable to use the right hand to give and/or take things. And the first step into the house should be the right one, more so by choice not to speak of it being a custom and tradition.

 

Another rare group of people are ambidextrous who can use either hand with the same ease and churn out equally same output.

 

However, right hand is traditionally and invariably used for eating and other general purposes; for other activities either or both hands are used.

 

Lefties could be adventurous too with innate ability at problem solving with their ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking as opposed to the conventional black-and-white route. Because, they have grown up with the challenges of being different in the world with everything designed invariably for the right-handed; they are also believed to be nimble. Even if it is as small as adapting to doors, tools, or scissors, they develop functional solutions. That makes left-handers more flexible in workplaces, and fast to react.

 

There seems to be no evidence to show that good hand-writing or script goes with any particular hand. Quality of hand-writing is decided by natural instinct and keen interest taken by the individual to write well ever since he/she starts writing from childhood and thereafter by continuous practice. Again, a good hand-writing does not necessarily guarantee a bright career/future and vice versa. Doctor’s prescription is a simple pointer.

 

With all said and done, while shaking hands, only the right hand comes in handy and that is the custom and convention. As generally believed by Indians, if only the notional writing on the head (‘kismat-ki-rekha’ in Indian parlance) were good, that alone decides one's good fortune or ill-fate.

 

Overall, handedness doesn't really matter. Right hand or left hand, it is the helping hand that is holier!

August 13 is celebrated as 'Left-Handers Day' to spread awareness about 'sinistrality - the medical term for left-handedness. This is to re-assure left-handers that having a dominant left hand is absolutely normal.

 

 

R.SAMPATH