Keep Left!

It is said that most of the famous people the world over are left handed! Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Henry Ford etc etc. Why, even Sachin Tendulkar (despite being a right handed batsman), writes with his left hand! August 13 is apparently the International Left Handers day.
Being a natural right hander, this bit of news was making me a little uneasy. Hell – most of the famous people you hear of are left handed (can it not be , that the only time you hear of the hands of famous people is when they are not right?). So, if I have to be famous, why not try becoming left handed myself?
It was a good thought, but tough to put to practice. You see, I had tried to start writing left handed in school, but got promptly whacked by my teacher for being a nuisance by using the wrong hand! I used to sit on the right side of the desk , so my left handed was on the centre of the table when I was writing. My neighbour (don’t remember his name now) was right handed and sitting on the left side of the desk. Naturally when he wrote, his right hand would move around the middle of the desk. The result? My left hand hit his right hand and we came to blows (and bawls a little later). My teacher gave a supreme demonstration of foresight by nipping the problem in the bud – she stopped me from writing lefthanded (one more way to solve this problem was to force me to sit on the left side of the desk; that way my hand would always jut out of the table and not trouble anyone. But anyway...)
So – back to the present. I decided to re-discover my childhood and picked up pencil and paper to start writing (I had the distinction of being the only child in my class to have ‘copywriting’ till Class X; so my experience at copywriting is more recent). Well, when I tried to write a ‘t’, it became an ‘f’, an ‘a’ looked like a ‘u’ – the net result was a disaster! I left the paper on the table with a vow that I would resume practice the next day. Next day morning, I was surprised to hear my wife talking to our maid (who is illiterate) holding the scrap of paper in her hand and saying “ Not bad, you are trying to write English? Next time you want to write, let me know and I will teach you.” After that day, it has been ‘Keep right’ for me.