Left And Right

Of late I have developed what bhakts might consider the highly reprehensible habit of sharing quotes that mock at religions and question the existence of the Guy who allegedly lives somewhere up there on my facebook page. (If you have very low BP and are a theist you should read them. Your BP will soar. But avoid them if you are a believer and suffer from hypertension). Today I put a quote by Danish writer and journalist Lars Hedegaard on why critic izing religion is the starting point of all criticism.


While the entire quote was quite impressive (you can read it on my facebook page) one part really blew me away. The only quote that hit me like a bang earlier was one by French essayist Montaigne on pleasures of scratching. By scratching I mean scratching parts of our anatomy and not a scratch card hoping for some prize only to read BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME on it. I wrote a pretty long blog on scratching inspired by Montaigne some years ago. Now itr is the turn of Hedegaard to inspire me to bore you.


Where was I? Oh yes, one particular part of the quote blew me away before Montaigne interrupted me. In that particular line Hedegaard says where there is no criticism of religion everything becomes religion “FROM THE LENGTH OF YOUR BEARD TO WHICH HAND TO USE WHEN WIPING YOUR BACKSIDE”,


Well nobody has complained about my beard which is quite short. I really admire all those babas who have long beards , long and dense enough to accommodate birds or insect colonies in them. And that is one thing that has acted as a deterrent for my considering a career as a baba .Too bad because that happens to be the most flourishing profession in this countr. It is a business which won’t put a big hole in your bank balance. Nor would you need a bank loan to start it. All you need is a bunch of gullible oops sorry devout as investment to enter the business.


Grrrr flew off on a tangent again didn’t I? First it was courtesy Montaigne and now it is courtesy my beard. So let us come back to the main issue which happens to be the hand that wipeth the backside.


From childhood onwards it is dinned into our heads that we must use our right hand to eat and the left hand to wash our rears .In Tamil the right hand was called Soththu Kai (FOOD hand) and the left hand Peecha Kai (EXCRETA hand). The status of the left hand was way below that of the right hand.


Woe betide you if you used your left hand to write eat etc. Ignorant parents and teachers left no stone unturned to ensure that you use your left hand strictly for the purpose mentioned by Hedegaard, One teacher in my school thought that people who used left hand to write etc were freaks (“Leftists’ he called them in his glorious ignorance). One kid in my class had his knuckles rapped by the teacher with a scale every time he wrote with his left hand. “Saraswati the goddess of knowledge will leve you if you use the hand that cleans the excreta for writing”! he thundered at the boy.


“B- b-but I wipe my rear with the right” stuttered the poor kid. The teacher nearly had a heart attack and not so nearly had a screaming fit at the terrified leftie. Soon the kid left my school and joined another. Few years ago I met him and he was working as an aeronautics engineer at ISRO having survived ignorant teachers galore. It was that teacher’s good fortune that he didn’t have ambidextrous students. He would have burst quite a few blood vessels (His own, not that of the student)..


When I went abroad I was surprised to find that right handed people actually ate with their left hand holding a knife in their right and picking up the food by a fork in their left hand. I was diplomatic enough not to ask them with which hand they wiped their rear.

The right and left rule often extended to the feet. After marriage when a new bride enters her in-laws house she is supposed to first put her right foot inside. When someone built a house and had the grihapravesam ceremony EVERYONE was supposed to put the right foot forward including the guests. The belief was if you put your left foot inside first the houseowners will quickly fall below the poverty line as the goddess of wealth would desert them. “Only Jyeshta Devi, the goddess of poverty enters putting her left foot first over the threshold” a credulous believer once told me and I had a tough time curbing a fit of laughter.


Now I wonder how people clap. What is so difficult about clapping. The difficulty is it takes two hands to clap. The holy right hand and the hand that wipeth the rear have to come together to clap. Wouldn’t the holy right get polluted by the profane touch of the left? Or are we violating the traditional wisdom that we are supposed to wash our hands after clapping? If anybody knows please enlighten me. After all if such a great religious tradition exists we should not allow it to fade away.

 

cAIDE NICE TO MEET A FELLOW ATHEIST.AS LONG AS OUR TRIBE FLOURISHES BABAS WOULD BE KEPT IN CHECK. TRUE WHAT MATTERS IS CLEANLINESS BUT STILL LEFT HAND IS RATED LOWER THAN THE RIGHT TRADITIONALLY.

 

THAT IS A POSSIBLE HYPOTHESIS.

 

tRUE, LIKE RIGHTIES OUTNUMBERING LEFTIES.

 

True when numbers go, even if atheists outnumber babas the devotees seem to outnumber the atheists. Really said.