Today's World Left-Handers Day, an event to celebrate for the likes of Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, along with a galaxy of sportspersons - Sourav Ganguly, John McEnroe, Rafael Nadal, Jimmy Connors, Brian Lara. And last but not the least HR Venkatesh.
The word 'gauche' which means clumsy/awkward has its roots in the French word for left-handed. 'Sinister' happens to be the Latin word for left hand. And we have phrases like like left-handed compliment, which is indeed an insult masquerading as praise for left-handers. Not to forget the traditional Indian habit of using the left hand to clean your bowels.
Mihir Bose's History of Indian Cricket (published in 1990)advances the theory that a major reason India rarely produced great left-handed batsmen was because society considered it unclean, a hand to be used for cleaning bowels. Six years later, Sourav Ganguly put his best hand forward, challenging the theory. And later emerged Yuvraj Singh for good measure.
But will the unrelenting gaze of society allow somebody to put the left foot first at an auspicious occasion? Or eat with the left hand? Tough going in a society where the word 'right' is a synonym for being correct.
Though a right-hander, I too have closet left-wing sympathies. And sometimes it comes out of the closet, like bowling and throwing the ball with the left hand. Being the son of a left-handed father, I too inherited 'leftist' traits. But then my natural inclination to write with my left hand was not allowed to flourish, because of a belief that a left-hander would be slower in writing, among other things.
Mercifully, I moved from left to right without too much trouble. At least I got to throw with my left hand. A sea change from what I've heard an earlier generation of natural left-handers had to endure. As kids their left hand was physically punished, so that their left-wing sympathies were clipped forever.
At least one area where left-handers are not merely accepted but also feted is sports. Being a minority here does make you unpredictable. Facing a left-hander serve in a tennis court can be unnerving just because you are not used to his angles. In cricket, Indian batsmen have traditionally struggled against left-handed pacemen.
The Right is overwhelmingly mighty, and the Left may not be able to shake off all prejudices. But then might is not always right.
And is there space for a right-leaning centrist like me? If Sourav Ganguly can bat with the left hand and bowl with the right, there is hope for the ambidextrous, irrespective of which side of the right-left divide they are on.
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3 comments:
in future, will we be increasingly ambidextrous? john buchanan had certainly hinted as much after australia won the 2003 world cup, if you remember!
Imagine somebody fielding with equal felicity with both arms. Commentators can't say 'his throwing arm' or the ball's moved near his wrong arm. Also if you are batting left-handed and an off-spinner is giving you trouble you can switch to batting right-handed.
Sunil Gavaskar's done just that long back. To blunt Raghuram Bhat's left-arm spin he batted lefthanded in a Ranji game for a couple of hours.
Bhat recounts the episode in cricinfo
http://content-www.cricinfo.com/india/content/story/276028.html
wonder though, why this didn't apply to left arm bowlers that india produced..funnily, vinoo mankad, bapu nadkarni, bishen singh bedi, ravi shastri and venkatapathy raju..all of them bowled left handed but batted right handed..
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