Raise Your Hand If You’re Confused…
January 16th, 2008
Yesterday, when we three volunteers arrived for our scheduled day at Assissi, the children greeted us at the gate with their tiny palms raised up. They were showing off the burnt orange swirls of henna dye that an assistant there did for them, in celebration of Pongal (and oh, is Pongal in full swing!)
The young assistant offered to paint the Mendhi designs on our three “Auntie’s” palms, too. Anne and Roma wisely declined. (Have you tried chasing after children with one useless hand, caked thick with paint?) But I offered up my right palm, and when I did the woman gave a tentative glance to another assistant there. I asked if it was still okay. The two exchanged a few fast words in Tamil, gave me the old head nod and an “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
And then, the woman set to squirting a tube of the brownish paint onto my skin. The children stood on tip-toes to see the curls and loops and dots filling my palm. And when the woman finished, I was left to write awkwardly with my left hand on the chalkboard, as I worked on math equations with one of the children, Lakshmannen, my right palm outstretched flat to dry. Just about then is when another woman came out to see the finished design on my hand. When I raised up my right palm, she burst into laughter. “It should be left,” she said.
Left?!
Now, wait a minute. Everything I had heard thus far about the left hand is that it’s virtually shunned, used primarily to assist with just one singular (and very uncleanly) chore. Know what I’m talking about? Exchanging money, shaking hands, even painting the walls at St. Joseph’s – we had been told none of these things should ever be done with the left hand. In fact, when I first met Sukanya, I shook her hand with my right and mistakenly patted her shoulder with my left. She and the smaller children shuddered, looking as horrified as if I had just wiped my runny nose on her shoulder.
So what gives? Why all of a sudden are we adorning the taboo hand with beautiful paint?
The woman explained that since the right hand is used for eating, with your bare fingers basically used as your utensil, you wouldn’t want to have that hand painted. “You using fork?” she asked me. I said yes.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said.
My henna-painted hand, next to little Sophie’s (she’s one of the babies at the orphanage).
