Singrauli (Madhya Pradesh): Billy McLaughlin, artist and composer, astounded the world by making a resounding comeback as a left-handed guitarist after focal dystonia rendered him unable to perform in 2001 due to involuntary muscle contractions in right hand.
Similar to McLaughlin's feat, a small school in the Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh is challenging the notion of a 'dominant right hand' in its own way by training all of its students to be skilful with both hands. The Veena Vadini Public School of Budhela village has come into spotlight as all of its 150 students have gained the unique skill of writing with both hands simultaneously in five different languages.
The school was founded by former soldier Vringad Sharma who got inspired by the first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who was noted for his ambidextrous skills. Curious to learn more about this ability, Vringad left his army training, himself learnt the skill and started imparting this training to students.
Vringad found out that the students of the ancient Nalanda University could write 32 thousand words per day on average. Vringad tried writing with both hands himself. When he succeeded, he decided he would impart this skill to all the children that would attend his school. He founded this not-so-ordinary school on July 8, 1999.
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Students are taught to write with both their hands at a very tender age. With continuous practice, students of this school can write up to 24,000 words in just 11 hours. Vringad said that it is more a spiritual practice than a mechanical one. This skill can be achieved through meditation, determination, and yoga, which is why meditation and yoga are also taught daily for about one and a half hours in school. Writing with both hands simultaneously increases the ability to remember, sharpens the mind, and most importantly saves time.
Students here can write counting from one to 100 in Urdu in 45 seconds, in Roman in one minute, and in Devanagari script in one minute. They can translate 250 words from two languages in one minute. They can write up to 17 words in a minute. They write a table of two with one hand and a table of three with another one.
Dr. Ashish Pandey, Psychiatrist at Singrauli District Hospital said that "our brain is divided into two parts. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. According to this theory, people work with the right or left side, but 1 percent of people work with both their hands together, they are called ambidextrous. Both their parts are developed to work together and they have control over the whole brain."
