The Faces of Hand \m/

Knowingly or unknowingly we speak a lot of languages with our hands. Languages, sometimes alien to us! I was thinking how we do such things...? How we use our hands for expressing feelings and explaining thoughts and convincing unpersuasive and achieve unattainable! How we smile or cry or wink or motivate or sympathize with the hand movement! What do our hands do to make 2+2=4? ...and how sometime they can make 2+2=5 look correct? and how different faces of the hands come out for all these miracles or magics??

Well, I think we call these faces hand postures. Lets talk about some different situations in which different hand postures are used for different purposes.

Numbering...

How would you pass your mobile number to a friend who is on the other side of the train window? We use finger counts to display number or to calculate certain things.

Try the number 28347815 if you want...








Spelling...

Like numbers you can pass names or words with your hand as well.






Symboling...

There are many things for which we don't use words. There may be some for which, I suspect, word may not exist at all.

Few examples...give me a call... you rock... 'pluck yew'... Shhhh....hh... stop!... thumbs up... unity...

Pointing...

of course, we use hands and fingers extensively for it.

Expressing...

emotions like happiness... joy... pride... love... anger... frustration... sadness... sympathy... and expression like hooray!... yes!... you did it!... love ya.. with you always... go get it... I care... better luck next time... things would be fine... go to hell... shit!... boo.... hey buddy!... and so on......... your hands say it all... all the time before even you think!



Communicating Language...

Deaf and blind people use hand language as to communicate...




Playing Sports..

Howzthat... Cricket would be .... don't know what without swings and spins! And what would umpires do without the hand signs :|! ? And how would a pitcher know where to bowl if he has no sign from the catcher! and grip in tennis or for that matter any game... I guess football has less to do as far as hands are concern...





Playing a Musical Instrument...

Basically, thats where I got the thought of what different things we do with our hands...and what strange shapes we make using a palm four fingers and a thumb! I was fingering on my guitar and F major really made me pulling my hair with paining hand.. :(

Not only Guitar, many instruments use extensive service of the hands.. may it be piano or flute or tabla or saxophone...




Dancing!

Hand position and hand movement play an important part in dancing... especially in Indian classical dances... different gestures are made using hands in different 'Natya Mudra' to express specific meaning...


Shadowing...

Light can generate a lot of characters thru bare hands!!


Saluteing..

Salute in different institutions (Military services) are different and they are very specific about the hand posture and position...



Praying...












The religions, all that I know, use hands in one way or the other for the purpose of praying. So, hands do built steps to reach the God...


There would be many more places and situations where we use hands in different postures to create various gestures... but I will stop here. If there is something that I have missed and you can hit... go ahead and post it in the comments...