Yet Untitled 053 - A Change of Hand

When the way I write changed overnight

Dearest Yet Untitler,

Greetings! All good?

Early in my life, I started using an inverse left-handed pen grip while still holding the pen in my right hand. Does this compute? I’m not even sure if there’s a well-known nomenclature for this phenomenon - I did search the internet and did not quite find any commonly known descriptors for what I’m talking about, so I’ll illustrate via brilliant photos.

This is a how right handed people usually grip their pens:

This is how I have been holding my pen all my life:

Yes, I leave behind me reams and reams of smudged sentences. Left-handers avoid the smudging by holding their paper at an extreme angle to their hand. Somehow, for about the first 10 years of writing this way, I just couldn’t figure it out and sometimes employed an extra sheet of paper to simply blot the ink as I wrote. Thankfully, over time, my style evolved and I got past the smudging.

I was always aware of the visual impact on people who watched me write. It was always one of those things that got people to look up and take notice. As I wrote, I imagined it became a bit of a curiosity show, a spectacle - maybe because it looked extremely laborious. I have caused more than one prudish teachers to flip out of their metaphorical habits as if wanting to say “the Power of Christ Compels you” but instead saying “How will you ever finish your exams?” (this was a question I got asked a lot but I finished them all and didn’t do too badly either!).

---

Now…

I don’t know what happened but three days ago, out of nowhere, I suddenly started writing with a normal grip again🙈.

And this totally flummoxed me🤔. I had always assumed that the spectacular way I wrote was also an indelible part of my identity!

🙄

An Interlude on Identity:

A. To others: “Vasant is the guy with…”

1. “…the laugh that sounds like a sheep being electrocuted,” (someone actually said that to me once and I think he’s a YU reader!).

2. “…the writing grip that makes him look like a 17th century stone carver from Southern India” (someone actually said that to me once too!).

3. HANGRY issues - I have transformed from urbane V to batshit crazy V with fangs because I missed a window when I should’ve eaten a sandwich. The transformation is dramatic. Those who have seen it, you will never forget it - and you don’t let me forget that either! You can read more about my other mood swings in the YU below:

   Yet Untitled 018 - The Incredible Sulk

B. To me: “I’m the guy who…”

1. “…knows erstwhile Sri Lankan left-arm swing bowler Chaminda Vaas’s full name by heart.” (It’s Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas. If you don’t believe this, then catch me on the street, or call me randomly, and ask me. I’ll stun you with my Chaminda Vaas party piece!)

2. “…can bend my thumb back over my palm.”

   

   Yup, that’s my hand alright. Once, in Siberia (I kid you not) a very tough-looking Russian man challenged me to crush a bottle cap between my thumb and index finger. I couldn’t match his digit strength, so I showed him the ‘ol thumbie-bendie and the man looked at me as if he and I had fought his grandpa’s war together, and gave me a hug.

3. “…is a rightie but writes like a leftie.”

You see the basis of my mild anxiety now? A sizable chunk of my identity suddenly changed overnight. Literally, my signature changed. And it happened very naturally - like how an apple falls from a tree when it’s ripe.

Perhaps there’s something in this to unpack. Thank god for you, Yet Untitler, that I have this opportunity. Else it might have remained just another uninvestigated, significant feeling that had something important to reveal but was never tapped.

Here’s something that adds to my discomfort in suddenly holding my pen differently: in school, I’d read a book on handwriting analysis and some salient fundamentals got etched in my head - all supporting the thesis that your handwriting represents who you are. Here’s what I remember:

• writing your ‘i’ with a circle for a dot signified that you’re ‘immature’ (I changed circles back to dots immediately once I got to know!).

• Big ‘y’ or ‘g’ loops signified that you were ‘sensual’ (I remember I spent a lot of my middle teens forcibly writing extra-large ‘y’ and ‘g’ loops! Also, my Economics teacher at school was a very handsome man - very emulate-able - and he made these very artistic Gs with an amazing (sensual?) loop that I imitated for some years).

As is clear above - with considerable conviction in the relationship between my handwriting and who I am - I’ve tried reverse-engineering myself via altering my handwriting. I have no idea how much this worked, but I can tell you that I was no portrait of maturity or sensuality in the years when I carried out these dubious experiments.

Me, at the time of my handwriting experiments c. 1993

Three days ago, when I suddenly I started writing with a ‘normal’ hand, it was something not of my will but a manifestation of something. Of what? The obvious answer was that I must have changed in some way and if course I was curious. And fearful. Why fearful?

Could I have regressed? No longer being a person who held their pen in an inverse grip, had I suddenly become conventional? Boring? Old?

Couldn’t avoid these thoughts. But I wasn’t going to leave them at that dismal point either. In the attempt to unpack this surprising cluster of feelings triggered by this seemingly fundamental change in my way being, I looked at other recent changes I’ve been through in the past three years. Readers of Yet Untitled will be familiar with some of these.

I lost dad

Dad and I at the Farm, c. 2009

Putting aside the effect of grief - something I’ve been peeling away at and understanding slowly - I’d like to mention the impact of what his not being in this realm has had on my thinking. For better of for worse, my decision-making necessarily entered a more independent loop which - till he was there - had always taken him into consideration. Without his needing to have said anything - he was always present when I was deciding directional stuff about life. And then, he was not. I have a feeling that this has altered the chemistry of my brain in some way - in a way that will ensure that I put dots rather than circles above my I’s.

I grew my hair, again

This is the second time in my life that I’ve done it, and both times I’ve felt like it been a fuller expression of personality than before. Having come back to it and feeling a sense of homecoming convinces me that this is significant.

St. Stephens’ class trip to the Farm, c. 2001

I made some big, lifestyle changes

I stopped eating bread (unimaginable!). More accurately, by removing gluten from my diet, I made a change that got me past one very big affliction that plagued me - getting hangry! As I mentioned above, I was always knows as the guy whose mood would be the equivalent of a swallowed thundercloud if he didn’t eat at regular intervals. I literally never thought this would change, but it did.

I came closer than I ever have to directing

This is the dream that I came with when I arrived in Mumbai as a starry eyed neophyte interested in filmmaking. And now it’s immanent. As I’ve written earlier - it’s put me through an emotional grinder:

Yet Untitled 043 - An Anatomy of Intense Times

There’s been a steady stream of new challenges, and I’ve been through many cycles of trepidation and elation in surmounting them. I’m sure this grind has rewired me in many ways. Imagine how it’ll be when I actually emerge on the other side!

I went through three years of the pandemic…

…just like all of you!.

Part of this time, I spent looking like - as a close friend described - “a Russian trawler captain” after giving myself a buzz-cut, the diametric opposite of the self I came back to when I grew my hair.

Pandemic me, c. 2020

Three years is a short time in which to hit two extremes of yourself. Thinking about it - hell - I wonder how many of us would have encountered such different versions of ourselves in similar fashion during the three years of the Virus. I won’t be surprised if I hear back from many of you telling me about your own tectonic shifts that you’ve seen within yourselves during and after these lockdown years. In fact, I’d love to hear from you about this.

There’s definitely more to unpack here, but it’s deadline day and I’m out of time. I’ll say this - I’m no longer surprised that something as fundamental about me as my handwriting could change so suddenly and decisively; because I’m definitely capable of change. Even the seemingly indelible parts of me. This gives me hope.

My new handwriting isn’t so different from the old one, but I can see the subtle differences - it’s less round and a bit unsteady still as the muscles of my hand reorient themselves and respond better to my brain and its impulses. But I can feel it getting steadier. Here’s what it used to look like:

Here’s what it looks like now:

Despite having to relearn my own hand a bit, I feel a sense of progression to this change - perhaps because it’s coming on the back of so much movement within me.

Daisaku Ikeda, the Buddhist philosopher and philanthropist who I respect immensely, writes extensively about ‘Human Revolution’ the capacity of all individuals advancing or raising their life conditions to a place where their perception of life is unlimited. Buddhism constantly emphasizes that we are all capable of such change. Not only is it possible to change fundamentally, it’s essential. Ikeda says:

To shift one’s thinking and see things from another perspective is the first step to changing both oneself and one’s environment.

Change is afoot. Hallelujah! I wish you the same. I wish you growth.

Thanks for reading!

Lots of love again

V