During the election days, the voters do not forget to show their inked index fingers. This is done out of excessive satisfaction earned through exercising a vital constitutional right to vote. The electronic media give ample coverage of the voter’s expressions with the inked fingers. The fresh voters remain the most delighted ones who jovially and confidently come forward in showing their inked index fingers. It surely gives them a clear chance to participate at the democratic process. Whosoever wanted to highlight the inked finger either before the click-clack camera or the enthusiastic spectator exhibit the inked finger? Older or younger all experience the similar mood in showing the inked index finger.
However, lifting up inked index finger does not look bad or despicable. Raising a finger has always caused a flutter in every field of human activity. It used to denote dull sense in our daily mundane life. Even the politicians were reported to have said that the finger raisers could not be tolerated at any cost. However we should not forget that raising any of the fingers tells different overtones at certain time.
Verily, the first instance of finger rising was supposed to have been done by Strepsides, an Athenian citizen and a harried father at none other than Socrates in 423 B.C. Aristophanes wrote about this gesture in his Greek comedy, “The Clouds” and Strepsides was the hero of the play who presented the middle finger. It was then taken up as a rude and indecent gesture, mimicking the penis and testicles. In Western culture the finger or the middle finger is an obscene hand gesture. In ancient Rome, giving the finger was a physical threat.
The Latin phrase for the middle finger digitus impudicus literally means unchaste finger and the gesture was a symbol for anally penetrating men. In cricket when index finger is raised the cricketer is declared out. How could we forget Greg Chappell’s raising middle finger in the previous years? It gathered enough controversy in our country.
In everyday life raising little finger is considered as a need for clearing kidney. Undeniably a finger is a limb of human body and also an organ of manipulation and sensation found in the human hands and other primates. Normally we have index finger, middle finger, ring finger and little finger. The length of the index finger to that of the ring finger reveals of the male hormones mainly testosterone, a person is exposed to the womb. The more testosterone, the longer the ring finger grows. In the measurement of distilled spirits, a finger of whiskey refers to the amount of whiskey that fills a glass to the level of one finger wrapped around the glass at the bottom.
