belated arangetramversary post: good hands

I wrote this for an event organized by MS1s this past June for AAPI Heritage Month. I can't believe it's been six years (and some change) since my Arangetram day.

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Hold your forceps like this, delicately between your index finger and thumb. Load the needle halfway onto your needle driver, all the way at the point. Reload it before pulling through. Pronate your wrist. Don’t force it but come out right at the junction of skin and sub-Q.

Two weeks ago I could barely tie a surgical knot. I practiced each night in preparation for my moment in the OR – finally I was invited to close and it was the moment I had been waiting for, my knots were ready at the tips of my fingers. But my suturing skills were still raw and unrefined, in need of close coaching and careful practice.

The resident I worked with that day watched me, and he gave me close feedback after each step. With each push of my needle, I incorporated a new piece of feedback into my technique, and as I neared the end of my incision, the R3 approved. “You actually have good hands” he assured me - my heart swelled. Reading, breathing, living surgery, I hadn’t yet thought of myself as someone with good hands.

But then I was reminded of the dance days of my youth. Every Saturday for nine years, my parents drove an hour and a half each way to bring us to Kruti Dance Academy where we studied the ins and outs of Bharatanatyam. Every class I took and later taught began with a routine where we ran through our single-handed gestures, our double handed. We called them hastas and each had a special meaning.

Pataka was an open palm that represented a flag, kapitha was a fist where your thumb tucked under your index finger to make an elephant apple. Kataka mukhaha, your index finger and ring finger stretch out to meet your thumb while your ring and pinky stretch up and out, was a popular starting point for our hands. I was always a little extra proud of my alapadma, the lotus flower made by extending each finger, placing them 45 degrees apart and tightening evey muscle in your hand. These gestures brought beauty to adaav sequences, they brought meaning to stories we told. We used our hands to praise deities, to express emotions like pride and fear, to depict people and places and things. The curl of a pinky, the flip of a wrist, the splay of the little fingers, the moment when your hands come together meeting palm in palm – these mattered. I used to love looking at my hands. When I first learned my hastas, I’d run through them on my own during the week, whispering the names of each gesture as I brought my fingers together to create it. One trip to India, on our first night there, I laid awake from jetlag and sticky humidity, moving my fingers and palms methodically through the hastas I had just learned to pass the night. The practice of using hastas made my hands strong, nimble, fully in control of their motions and unlocked a new world where my hands could speak a language of their own.

My dance training had prepared me for my surgery rotation in another way. I wasn’t a particularly gifted dancer. I actually struggled a lot. I was torn down in a way that I only realized was toxic after I had left. But the constant stream of critique I got and the expectation to fix myself immediately had sharpened the path from my mind to my hands, to my shoulders, my feet. Shoulders back, elbows up, wrists higher. Sit deeper, heels together, back straight. Shoulders down, no bouncing as you move your feet out. Finish your moves, don’t off go beat. Use your facial expressions, sing, don’t sing, angle your neck to side, don’t move your neck so much. The expectation was to never be corrected twice for the same mistake. No praise for improvement. Perfection expected but excellence tolerated. Over the years, quietly I improved. I was strong enough to complete entire dances back to back, mature enough to emote complicated stories with a glisten of my eyes and the corners of my lips, persistent enough to keep pouring my heart into performances despite constant reminders that I wasn’t enough.

My surgery rotation has been an onslaught of constructive feedback, but making these rapid changes without complaint is the most natural thing for me after years of intensive classical training. But I’ve grown and critique doesn’t feel quite as soul searing as it used to, I’m more confident in my worth and less reliant on the approval of others to take pride in my work. The lessons I’ve learned from this ancient art form that stretches back millennia continue to surprise me in each new phase of my life. There would be a dancer-shaped hole in my soul without the gifts of Bharatanatyam, and for this rotation, I’m grateful for my good hands.