Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Being Left Handed !

“Wow, are you a left hander..?" It was an Unique attention, I received from my classmates and fellow students in school, not only there but also at marriages, social gatherings, and any place I used my hand, I got this attention of being unique and popular, I liked it a lot because in India, being a left handed person is very rare. It’s not very often that you see someone using the other hand.

I have enjoyed the attention for the sake of being left hander, even though it was genetics which decided this thing and it’s not even a kind of talent that you could be proud about, but in India, being left handed is a cool thing, since people hardly see anyone in day to day life, most people get to see left handed people only on TV esp. only in cricket and other sports. In fact, in my 21 years of my life in Chennai, I came across just 5 left handed people other than me, 3 guys and 2 girls. I noticed that left handed girls are a rare species.

The attention is sometimes not so good; many used to feel my use of the hand to be awkward, because they couldn't understand the concept of being left handed. many of my friends had lot of questions and doubts regarding use of the left hand, some were logical, many were stupid... some of the usual questions were " if you use this left hand for eating, which hand do you use for toilet purpose?" (Because in India, left hand is used by right hander’s to wash after toilet), it was a very awkward question to answer, but my answer to all the questions was the same “your right hand is my left and vice versa”.

when it comes to elders, esp. the old ones, whenever they see me eating using my left hand, they give me a nasty expression as if I was eating shit and advised me to use my right hand, after hearing a lot of comments like this, I literally avoided going to marriages till I was 15, if it was an important function and I had to go, my mom used to carry a spoon for me, so that I can eat with a spoon, and south Indian marriages had to have banana leaf instead of plates and eating with a spoon on a banana leaf, imagine it.

My kindergarten teachers took the left handedness to the next step and like it was an evil thing, they tried to do a kind of exorcism by trying to make me change my writing hand to right hand and as a result of forced training, my brain got little jammed in the neurons and I couldn't talk for a few weeks, then my parents took me to the doctors, did some speech therapy and made me alright back again, but I had a little bit of a stuttering problem for quite some time as a aftermath.

It’s also a hard thing with day to day life, because it’s a right handed world out there. My Teachers at school used to assign a desk especially for me, as I could only sit on the extreme left corner, so that I wouldn’t bump into right handers while writing. I had to eat with spoon, because people thought it was gross to eat with left hand. It was an easy task for people to copy from my exam paper as I used to write in an odd position which is easily visible. The use of basic everyday stuffs like scissors, ruler and computer mouse was a tough task and now in USA, driving a car seems to be a little rough task for me since I have to change gears with my right hand.

Sometimes I have found it difficult and thought left handedness was a curse, since my right brain is pretty dominant because of left handedness, I am not pretty good at logical or rational subjects, so my math was very bad. History, geography, chemistry and biology were my best subjects in high school, since they are the ones you can actually think and understand in pictures, which the right brain does best. I did top my classes in those subjects but interestingly, I got fond of physics too during my 12th board and managed to top it, physics was the only rational exception, I’ve had but it was All in vain as Math got me down every time. Somehow me n math don’t get along very well... Neither is it good with its teachers.

Intuition is a very important function of the right brain, and I am strong in it. My intuitions are 99% correct and I believe in them completely, although occasionally I do get let down by my intuitions, also It is easy to say that I am also a big risk taker because of my dominant right brain.

In recent years, I noticed that the dominance of my right brain has increased too much and it’s getting to a stage where it’s more like a master-slave situation. My left side of the body is much more strong and dominant and my right side is totally uncoordinated. I realized that my right side is unbalanced and does not cooperate with the body. My right hand’s reflexes are slower than the left and right leg doesn’t coordinate well. For example, when catching a cricket ball, my right hand delays in reflex, hence I miss the catch and while playing badminton, my right leg doesn’t move as fast as my left leg, so I trip over sometimes while moving sideways. It is a simple defect I noticed, later I found more instances where my right hand wasn’t in my total control.

Now, I am trying to see if I can balance out my two sides of the body. It’s a small experiment I am trying to see, if I can possibly make myself get full control of my right side of the body, which in turn might help tune my left brain to make me more rational and intelligent. I’d give details about the progress of my experiment in coming posts. Let’s see if it works..!



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