Holding hands

I don’t remember when I held somebody’s hand first in my life. But I am pretty sure of doing that, when I was a small baby. Initially, holding it while lying down thinking that it is another toy shown to me. And then subsequently for a more serious reason to get support when I decided to stop crawling and attempt walking. That first handholding was the very foundation for successful walks of my life so far.

It is an art to release the hand at the right time while shaking hands with someone, else that would result in holding the hand. We, young men had a problem with that when we travelled first time to the US. They used to give feedback that we guys hold hand tight and for a much longer duration while shaking hands with them, especially with the women. Since we were not accustomed to that practice of greeting, we were too nervous. Special training sessions were arranged for the same. How to stand, how far to stand of course after spraying sufficient quantities of deodorant, how much pressure to apply, approximately how many shakes and when to release the hand! That way our Indian conventional system of greeting is advantageous, you can do that “Namaste”, you can choose to stand a bit far if you are allergic to deodorants; you can hold your own hands for as much time as you wish with no inconvenience to others. No need to worry at all as what sexuality the other party belongs to.

I think I had narrated this episode in one of my earlier blogs in some other context. How does it matter? I myself do not remember what all I had written while blogging day in day out. How will you recollect something as you keep reading so many blogs by so many people?  With that belief let me continue. After having food from the hostel canteen I decided to go and relax in the recreation room. I saw everybody reading newspaper and nothing was available for me to read. I looked around and found the reason. Our man, Ratinam was watching a Carnatic music program on TV, so others didn’t have much choice. Not knowing what to do, I sat next to Ratinam pretending that I too enjoy the music. I realised, simply sitting would not be all that convincing, so I also started tapping on my lap like Ratinam did. Must be the food that day was unusually good, my taps became a bit heavier and louder which resulted in me getting my first and last strongest hold in my life on my hand by someone else. “Wrong beat boss”, Ratinam was so annoyed that I totally upset his rhythm, he held my hand so tight that those very few non-visible veins on my hand started glowing red!

If someone holds your hand, that can bring in good and bad news. That morning I was about to get into the bus to complete my last leg of my journey to college. It was my cousin, who held my hand preventing me from entering the bus. That hand-holding brought in two news.  Bad news first for a change. Our great grandma had passed away. And that bad news totally overshadowed the good news that I didn’t have to attend classes that day.

Wedding day is when I had to hold my wife’s hand for such a long time, to take those three rounds in front of “homa”, fire. Earlier days, it was necessary, as both people would be in great fear, many a times they must be seeing each other for the first time. I feel that custom is still relevant even these days. A few odd people would have stared at you in “hand-holding” position in the previous instances prior to wedding, this would be the first time so many people in unison staring at what you are doing in approval, which will definitely increase the bonding between the two.

Have you seen anybody getting beaten up for lending hand for someone to hold? I had. In front of Tirumala temple. We were standing in the general queue for “darshan” and we reached near the outer entrance. There was another parallel, much shorter queue on our right reserved for differently-abled people, physically. Both queues suddenly got stuck, as some group of people got the preference, not because they were challenged by anything, just because they were VVIPs. Then this incident happened. A cop, who was checking people in the differently abled group for the genuineness, could not find any challenging, visible limb on one of them. Probably that was not the first time the cop had noticed this person! He slapped once the person who was pretending in that stooped position, and slapped many more times to the support person who was lending him a hand! 

Do lend your hand to those who need it. But, try to make sure that it is for a genuine cause, otherwise you might get slapped really badly. Even god will not be able to help you there.