Importance of a thumb and two fingers

We recently purchased a set of Cutco knives from my daughter’s friend, who was selling them to gain some money for her College education starting this year. Boy, are they sharp!! More like surgical knives!

Anyway, to make a long story short, within a week of buying the new knives, my wife cut up fingers up. It was a Saturday and I was away with the kids at the Piano classes when I get this call from my wife. She was panting and asking me how much time would I need to reach home. Well – I was about 20 miles away and the kids were just finishing the lessons, so I assumed about 30 minutes. Then I was informed that she had sliced her fingers with the new knives. I, being my stupid ignorant self – not having learnt from my 20 years of married experience, thought this was a minor cut but then was told that the cuts are deep and there was lot of blood flowing out. Yikes!!!

The knife was new and was as sharp as a surgical knife. Needless to say, the cut was really deep and she was bleeding badly. She tied tourniquets above her elbow and kept her hand raised high up over her head. She squeezed ice cubes to stem the flow of the blood. But after about 40 min of this, the blood was still not stopping and that made her think that she was in trouble.

So I told her to contact our neighbors, who were unfortunately out. Then my wife reached out to our friends, who stay a couple of mile away in the same town. Luckily, Keerti was there and decided to come over right away. She too thought it was a minor thing, until she reached home and saw her hand. I, in the meanwhile, was zooming on the freeway and made it home just in time to see Keerti driving out of my driveway. They told me they were going to the ER.

The ER was a long wait. After almost an hour, a nurse came out to see and told us that she was going to need stitches. It took nearly 2 hours before the doctor could come over. By then the bleeding had kind of tapered down and was no longer gushing out, so he chose to put a kind of bio-glue called as Derma Bond. It seals the skin and the blood vessels. I thought it would be a good thing to sell with the Cutco knives in the future and am going to recommend it to that company. They may have a new market for this product, if they can get the clearance to sell that glue.

Anyway, my wife’s fingers were bandaged heavily and each bandage was about 3 times its size to protect it. By the late after noon, the bleeding was contained, and the pain had stopped.

It has been about 2 weeks to the incident, now as I write this. My wife had trouble doing a lot of work since the two fingers (fore finger and the middle finger) in her left hand were damaged. But this brought a couple of interesting historical things to my mind.

According to a popular myth the two-fingers salute and/or V sign derives from the gestures of long bow men fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War. The story claims that the British archers were very good and to over come their skills, the French started capturing the suspected British archers and cutting off two fingers on the right hand of captured archers. The thought was that this would prevent them from holding the arrow and shooting accurately. However, as luck would have it, the British still won and to tease the French, they saluted them with two fingers and said Pluck Yew!! The gesture was a sign of defiance by those who were not mutilated. (This false etymology has also given rise to an alternative name for the gesture, which can also be known as flicking an "Archers Salute" or just "Archers" as in "He just flicked me an Archers!".) The website Snopes, however, shows that medieval warriors had no interest in capturing common archers that could not be held for ransom, preferring instead to simply kill such prisoners. Furthermore, mutilating a prisoner to stop them from using a bow wouldn't make sense, since killing them would stop them from ever serving the enemy again. There is also the fact that contemporary accounts of the battle make no references to the French mutilating their prisoners by cutting off fingers from their hands. The first definitive known reference to the V sign is in the works of François Rabelais, a French satirist of the 1500s.

The other historical incident is from the Indian tale of Mahabharata, supposedly about 5000 years ago. For those that are not aware, Mahabharata is the epic of a huge war between the armies of the first cousin brothers – the Pandavas, who were 5 brothers with a common wife, and the Kauravas, who were 100 brothers – all born around the same time using artificial techniques (similar to the test tube available technology today). In the story, when the kids are young, they all study archery from the same Guru, Acharya Drona (Acharya means Professor). Drona liked Arjun and promised to make him the best archer in the world. Now, one of the adivasis (aborigines in India), Eklavya also wants to learn archery from Drona, but Drona declines saying that he will only teach the Princes from the Royal Family. Eklavya is upset but not heart broken – he builds a mud statue of Drona and practices by himself in the forest, soon mastering the art. One day, the princes go out on a hunt into the forest along with some dogs. One of the dogs goes close to where Eklavya is practicing and starts barking. To shut him up, Eklavya shoots 5 arrows into his mouth before the dog can close its mouth, without killing the dog. The dog runs back to the princes who are astonished at the feat. They ask Eklavya who did he learn the art from and he proudly points to the statue of Drona. The princes go back to Drona and Arjun tells him the whole story. He also asks Drona how the Acharya could go back on his promise of making Arjun the best archer in the world. So, Drona tells Arjun not to worry and they decide to go and meet Eklavya. Eklavya is thrilled to meet his Guru and bows to him. Drona tells him that he is glad to see that Eklavya was able to learn from him even by not attending the classes in person. But, since he had used the services of the Guru, he had to pay the Guru his Dakshina (which was a fee the students paid the Guru after their education was completed). Eklavya was more than happy to ask the Guru what he wanted for his Dakshina/fee and to the utter dismay of everyone present, Drona asked for the right thumb of Eklavya. Even more amazing was the fact that Eklavya promptly chopped it off to give it to his guru. The thought behind this request was that if the thumb of the hand that pulls the string and holds the arrow, as it is pulled from the quiver and placed on the string, is not there, the archer will not be able to shoot accurately.

However, Eklavya was still able to master the art using his forefinger and his middle finger, but his efficiency did come down and Arjun did become the best archer in the world.