Blog 129 - A History of Hands

The History of Hands

Fingers in the pie.

Hands in the till.

Hand-me-downs.

Hands off.

Hands up.

Good with his hands.

Holding someone’s hand.

Lovers holding hands.

Lending a hand.

In the palm of your hand.

Shake hands.

All hands on deck.

Greasing palms.

Itchy palms.

Palming cards.

Fingers, palms, hands are all ingrained into our psyche, as they play a very important part in all our lives.

Hands are the give aways to what you are.

Are you the confident type?

Are you mild tempered or violent? Are you short tempered?

Are you pragmatic, logical, materialistic?

Are you full of drive, energetic, innovative?

Are you the philosophical type?

Are you the artistic type?

One can deduce all this from merely looking at one’s hand.

Palms exude a sense of mystery. What is the primordial secret behind each line in your palm? Why are they there in the first place? Instead, we could have palms with small squares or no lines at all. Why did the ancients name the lines as ‘Heart Line’, ‘Head Line’, ‘Life Line’? What did they know that we don’t or have forgotten?

If you are a believer, then an expert palmist can unravel your life, like plaited hair, into strands. If you are a non-believer, you can only convince yourself that it is all nonsense.

Then there are the nails. Ancient Ayurveda attributes different health states to different aspects of the nails, as also attributes to the personality of a person.

Long nail shape - You are creative, imaginative, meticulous and more.

Wide nail shape - You are open minded, expressive, charismatic and more.

Round nail shape - You are calm, collected, never panics in a high pressure situation and more.

Square nail shape - .You are independent, a take-charge guy and more.

Nails also show up health issues. 

Horizontal ridges across the nails can be attributed to vitamin deficiency, diabetes, vascular problems.

Curved nails can mean lung diseases.

Nails, under normal circumstances, are pink, showing good health.

Pale nails can mean anemia, heart or liver disease.

Nails with a bluish tinge may be due to oxygen deficiency, caused by a possible heart disease.

Dark lines under the nail may be caused by melanoma, a skin cancer.

Discolouration of nails may be the harbinger of something lurking in your body.

And then, there was my hand, that defied all the knowledge of the ancients. Well, not really my hand, but a very close representation of my hands for the first 12 years of my sea career.

Courtesy - Thanks to an Unknown Photographer

I came across this stunning picture of - what I thought - was my hand and fingers of aeons ago. It turned out to be somebody elses. Nevertheless, it sharply reminded me of my own hands and fingers till I got promoted to the rank of Chief Engineer. Calloused hands, broken fingernails with deeply embedded carbon, palms like emery paper, with even the palmistry lines filled with black residue - that was the state of my hands. It was the worst in the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, till I became Chief Engineer and instituted a few sweeping reforms on how to work in the Engie Room.

In spite of the costs involved and opposition from the vessel’s Superintendents, I insisted on proper ear protectors - not ear plugs made of foam or (sometimes) just plain cotton. Next came helmets, which was accepted by the engine staff after a lot of opposition. Safety shoes supplied by the Agency recruiting you were of such poor quality that they would not last a month, which made Engine Room staff wear Slip Ons or canvas athletic shoes. Once again, costs and an argument with the Superintendent - me going to the extent of saying, nay, mildly threatening, that if the staff do not have protective gear, no work will be done on board. 

(As an aside, I went for a hearing test after I retired, on the basis of complaints from home members. Each ear had a 40% hearing loss, mostly due to the high pitched whine of the turbochargers. Top grade hearing aids cost a bomb. Of course, in life, it is an added advantage if people around you think you cannot hear). 

Hand gloves were introduced, which lessened the cuts and bruises that an Engineer takes for granted.

When I used to go home from a ship (in the earlier days), all those around me used to be bemused by the fact that 

1. I would get up, brush, bathe, eat and go back to sleep. This routine would go on for at least one week, sometimes 3 weeks, depending on how tough the ship had been. At the start of my sea career, it was 2 near continuous service years on board, except for a short leave of one 10 day period in between. Then it came down to a year of continuous service, then 10 months, 8 and finally six months when I left sea.

2. We all ate using our fingers at home. But, for at least a week, I would use a spoon and a bowl for my meals. My hands and fingers and nails used to be that dirty that it would take me a week - with soap and luffa sponge for the hands and a toothbrush for the nails - before my hands shed the accumulated months of carbon soaked machinery. (We had no ‘hand cleaner gels’ in the initial stages, were sometimes provided with a harsh soap that had more sand in it than the Marina Beach).

Right from the age of 12, I had been interested in palmistry.

At the age of 15, I was travelling by train from Coimbatore to my home in Secunderabad, having finished my schooling. We were a bunch of classmates, some going to Chennai. To pass the time, I was reading palms. To one of my classmates, I told her that she’d have two husbands and everyone laughed. 

By a quirk of fate, I met her again at a friend’s house 50 years later. She quietly confided, remembering my reading of her palm 50 years ago, that she was into her second marriage, having divorced.

When I was doing my Pre-University, all of 16 years of age, I came across two palms of my classmates that showed very short lifelines, showing an early death, probably from an accident. 

I gave up palmistry right then and there.

Quite a handful, wouldn’t you say?

Rangan