As a kid, I always believed I had superpowers. A die-hard fan of Dragon Ball-Z, I always thought there was a Goku inside me. As time passed, I grew up to find out to my utter disappointment that I had none. Nevertheless, I started building some. It may sound funny (crazy that I am), I started to torture myself into forced adaptations. One of them was…what we commonly call AMBIDEXTERITY. In my case – forced ambidexterity.
Caution: Forced ambidexterity can cause tremendous mental stress. In some severe cases it may lead to mental retardation. Try at your own risk. I did and would STRONGLY RECOMMEND AGAINST IT!
The first few days…
The initial few days are both amusing and hugely challenging. It really feels like you are learning to write, all over again; takes a lot of effort to draw those circles, triangles and squares. Scribbling A, B, C, D seems such an arduous task. Accompanying it, is a funny feeling. It feels as if you are watching over a kid struggling with his grip on the pencil; your unconditioned hand assumes an identity of its own, it isolates itself from the conditioned body and brain. You realise what a nursery child has to go through; you understand his psyche, you understand his helplessness.
By the end of the 1st month (if you can somehow manage to make it that far) your letter formation and subsequently word formation improves considerably.
Just a random fact – In case of forced or adapted ambidexterity, your left hand and right hand writing doesn’t match; it MAY match if you are congenitally ambidextrous.
After 2-3 months…
Though your adapted hand continues to improve, your other hand begins to start de-functioning. Due to nervous re-circuiting your right hand writing suffers a major blow. You get confused more often while writing. Your letter formation goes haywire. You realise something is terribly wrong! There is a strong urge to drop the practise altogether. Thankfully, I persisted. But little did I know this was just the beginning…
Another 2-3 months later…
You get gifted with something absolutely remarkable! There comes a day when it suddenly dawns upon you …things, events, people, places are being registered in greater detail. You tend to RECORD practically everything that you see. Mark my words…RECORD (and recording and recollection are two different things). I don’t know why this happens. My guess…a part of your subconscious infringes into your conscious.
Now, whenever I tell this to people they start testing my memory skills. Guys, listen…once and for all…RECORDING and RECOLLECTION are 2 different entities. Let me explain it. If Nandu (forced ambidextrous) and Pappu (normal guy) both go to a psychiatrist, Nandu would be able to recollect more than a 1000 things on hypnosis whereas Pappu would struggle to give out even a 100.This is because Nandu’s recording was much superior to Pappu. Let’s just say Nandu recorded it in 1080p whereas Pappu in 180p (‘p’ stands for pixels). Accordingly, we require more buffering time to recollect. I hope I made my point clear.
Nevertheless not to disappoint my friends, I do try to recollect and recount the exact scene, event or object in great detail (and so can many ambidextrous people) and often leave them dumbfounded. But, the entire process takes a heavy toll on us. Believe me…it is very, very exhausting. In a nutshell, I can just say we have to play the part of both the hypnotist and the re-collector in this case but it takes 4 times the energy!
When I couldn’t take it anymore…
After 7-8 months of regular writing, I decided to move to the next level. I had seen many Youtube videos in which ambidextrous people used to write mirror images with their left and straight images with their right hand. I couldn’t wait to achieve this feat. Every day, whenever I had free time, I would sit down and write and write and write for hours together. The entire exercise had a debilitating effect on my vocals. My power of speech slowed down…I began to stammer. Being a passionate talker, I took notice of the imperfection in no time. I had no option but to quit… :(.
Within a day or two, the stammering disappeared. This further confirmed its causal action. I knew I had to abandon the exercise completely. I was far too terrified to continue.
There are people who tell me that you try to show off, try to stand out, you make up things etc. etc…. maybe I do. I NEVER ask you to believe me just as I never asked you to read through this lengthy article. But just in case you are thinking of trying out something very similar to forced ambidexterity, please do consult me. I will be more than happy to help you.
It has been more than 2 years since I dropped practising ambidexterity.How much of it do I still retain?…Well, I can still write on a whiteboard with both hands equally well, the superb recording power is still intact and even after 2 years and 3 months to be precise, I still pass both the tests for ambidexterity – the both-sided tongue flip test and the one-eye closed reading test. How credible are these tests I can’t say…but these seem to be the only ones we have right now.
If you want to know more about me and/or ambidexterity in detail, feel free to contact me via mail or post.
Nandu speaks 