Sunday, December 3, 2000		Article

ALTHOUGH, the hand plays a vital role throughout man’s life, the role of the thumb is crucial, right from the days of thumb-sucking to thumb-twisting. A hand without a thumb is like a hat without head. Very few people know that ‘thumb-impression’ started in India. That’s why we have the largest number of ‘thumb-impressionists’ in the world. Yet it is the illiterate alone who do not believe in the rule of the thumb.

We do not have many Tom Thumbs around, but being without a thumb-index is like a village without a well, Hamlet without the kingdom of Denmark. A thumbs-up signifies victory, while a thumbs-down means defeat.

But what happens to a girl with thumbs-up being denied a lift by a passing vehicle? Surely it is not a fault of her thumb. It may just happen that from a distance her thumb might have looked twisted.

And what’s distance education, asked the teacher of a child. In all his innocence, the child twisted his thumb and said: ‘Eklavya’. ‘Eklavya’: who was he?

He was a child character in Mahabharata. Having been denied admission in Guru Dronacharya’s Ashram on grounds of low caste, he set up a stone effigy of the Guru, at a distance from the main gate of the forest school, and learnt archery taking inspiration from the Guru’s instruction to Arjun in the school premises. This is the origin of the distance education which our Indian experts think is an imported concept. How Eklavya lost his right thumb is another story.

When Dronacharya realised that Eklavya would defeat Arjun in archery, he accepted him as his shishya but demanded gurudakshina in order to enable him to bless the pupil. The Guru demanded Eklavya’s right thumb and the history of the Epic War was changed for all times. But for the thumb Eklavya would have emerged as a hero of the Mahabharata. But Destiny willed it differently.

It is thus clear that the four fingers without the thumb are meaningless. You can’t even hold a pen. At best you can smoke a cigarette with two fingers which civilised governments are banning in all countries. In Delhi schools children cannot smoke any longer. The other thing one may do is to use finger as a verb. Surely you can buy a packet of finger chips to please your girl friend. But today’s girls do not accept the rule of the thumb. They have a mobile with them. Besides they are choosy.

Last, but not the least, you cannot shake hands if you are thumb-less or even if your thumb is not functioning properly as it happened with me many years ago, when I developed a weeping eczema on my right thumb. I was given a diplomatic assignment and I was supposed to shake hands with every diplomatic Tom, Dick, Harry and indeed non-diplomatic Martin. I was paralysed and ran from one skin specialist to another. As the days passed and my assignment drew nearer I passed restless nights thumbfully. I was about to give up till suddenly I met a kindly homoeopath.

‘One dose, Khullar saab and you will not recognise your own thumb’, he proclaimed, like a messiah.

‘Have you brought an empty bottle? If not take it from that gunny-bag and fill it with some water’: he told me sitting on his wheeled chair:He was Rai Bahadur Bishambar Das, Mahadev Road, New Delhi.

I obeyed electrically. He administered the dose and asked me to report the next day. I thought it was a practical joke. Literally it was one doze to be repeated every four hours. But 10 and behold. The weeping eczema was dried up in less than 24 hours. My thumb regained its originality.

I kept my assignment and shook hands with impunity with everyone I met, irrespective of the fact whether it required the shaking of hands or not, to use the diplomatic jargon.

That was the day I realised the power of the Thumb.