Rakesh Maggon
I suspect that the word “man” emerged from the word “manus”. Manus means the hand and one thing that gave the “man” a real kick-start in his evolution was this manus. With manus the man could dig, shape, write, paint, strum, shoot and even text.
Soon he became the king of the proverbial jungle and started to dominate the nature’s proceedings. Lives attained greater complexity and numerous societies materialised. With time men met other men, as indeed women, and such interaction inevitably necessitated a need for a greeting.
It is said that as far back as 500BC, Greeks first indulged in a handshake and this manual exchange was purely from a safety standpoint. This was one way to express that one’s hands were clean of any weapon. Romans extended the courtesy all the way up to the elbow and carried out a very thorough search to shake off any weapon.
So, began the greetings. Variety, they say, is the spice of life. Men at different places spiced their lives up differently and cultures allowed different gestures to evolve. Hand, face, feet, nose, cheeks and forehead, all exposed parts of the human body were put to use.
However, a touch was integral to all such greetings; be it the rub-of the-noses among Maoris or rubbing the cheeks in France or a, now-so-popular, Yankee fist bump and not to forget the “high” or “low” five. Now, all these manual tactile interactions have their proponents in different geographies and cultures but one gesture that has withstood the test of time and has acquired a gender-neutral universality, it is the ubiquitous handshake.
Many fabulous attributes
A hand shake has many fabulous attributes. You can enter a room full of strangers and instantly make the first move by warmly shaking a strange hand. The firmness of your grip and the duration of contact can be deemed to be measures of degree of acquaintance.
The grasp of hands brings about a certain physical proximity and an inevitable eye contact ensues. This arguably sets the stage for furthering the cause of a potential relationship. That the shake is always with the manus dextra, is also a pointer towards hand of the divine in ensuring that one always starts with the right side and the right spirit.
A handshake is the warmest means of congratulating anyone. Congratulatory messaging tends to be longer and requires the congratulator to have sufficient opportunity to convey his entire sentiment.
A handshake is an ideal method to precisely time the duration of interaction and one holds on accordingly. The proximity and eye-contact impart an altogether different dimension to the exchange.
A handshake is indeed a great token of solemnity at partings. Touch of a hand conveys an deeply comforting warmth in spite of the sorrow of separation, the pain of severance, the anxiety of absence, the sombreness of loss. It is when these hands are held in a transient embrace that many a memorable parting words have been said.
Great sportsmanly gesture
Hand-shakes are the points of start for many a sporting event. They are considered a great sportsmanly gesture before the ferocity of competition overtakes everything else. Indeed they, sort of, reaffirm the spirit of the sport at the end of a fiercely contested game.
Who can forget the gentlemanly handshakes of the Rod Lavers and Bjorn Borgs and Jimmy Connors of the era gone by? Or the ones Peles and Eusabios and Platinis indulged in after bruising encounters on the soccer pitch.
Readers are well with in their rights to ask the relevance this issue at this juncture. I must confess that this teeny-weeny particle of incomplete life, a virus, has left us all completely homebound, monitor-fixated and in our islandic isolation. Life does limp back to normality but I miss the bonhomie of the workplace.
I miss the hand shake.
It’s all very well to fist-bump or tangle elbows or meet-feet, but none of this opens the day with a co-worker as well as the good old handshake did. The office doesn’t feel the same. No more loud and lively morning greetings with hands in a firm clinch. No more hugs with hands in embrace.
I truly wish that this virus that has shaken us all is shaken off soon so that we can go back to days of an easy handshake.
Dr Rakesh Maggon is a Dubai-based specialist ophthalmologist with an interest in literature. Source: Gulf News
