Greet and grin

“To mock the flood that cleansed the earth
Noah built the ark.
Mock the eternal silence — Oh teach the dogs to bark.”
From The Guidance of Satan by Bachchoo
Amongst the million-selling hits of the late, great Louis Armstrong, sweet trumpeter and sand-paper-voiced singer, was the song What a wonderful world.

One of the verses says:
“I see friends shaking hands
Saying how do you do
They’re really saying
I-love-you!”
It’s a song of hope and generosity, full of the glory of being alive.
Shaking hands comes naturally to Westerners and I suppose it’s the civilian’s salute, an assurance originating in primitive and savage times that one is not armed and here’s the proof. One was always told that the soldier’s salute meant just that, whether it was the Roman or Nazi open-palmed raising of the right arm or the bent-elbowed offering of a hand to the forehead.
We Parsis say “Sahebji” in greeting in place of the English “How do you do” or “Hello”. The Parsi greeting is an allusion to the almighty — “I come in his name.” So also are “Salam aleikum”, “Ram Ram” and “pranam”. And I guess, because the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
doesn’t tell me, that “Hallo” comes from a shortening of Hallelujah which in Hebrew means Praise to Jah (Jehovah). Same thing.
The American and now universal “Hi” is of course quite different, being short for Highball which is a mix of spirits and soda and is obviously a demand for a stiff drink to face the person you’re meeting (I bet this defined derivation gets into the entry for “Hi” on some website probably called Etymopedia!).
“Hello” and “How do you do” are accompanied by the handshake and when Parsis say Sahebji there is a hand gesture we make towards our foreheads. The Muslim greeting is accompanied by the gesture of the palm towards the chest and the Hindu pranam or namaste is accompanied by the joining of palms. Continentals and some West Asian males exchange kisses to the cheek or to the air below the sideburns. Eskimos I am told rub noses to convey to each other how cold it is.
All of these have their different degrees of elegance.
The handshake is capable of conveying something of the shaker’s character. There are in fiction and reportage firm handshakes, feeble ones, damp ones, limp ones, determined ones, crippling bone-breaking ones, fleeting and reluctant ones, dirty ones, prolonged ones, desperate ones and those which remind one of cold dead rats being dangled for you to grasp.
The remoter, no-touch greetings are also capable, but to a lesser degree, of carrying connotations. There is the aristocratic salaam, the humble, stooping namaste or the regal, even imperious one.
All this information or these acute observations I offer to the senior members of my old alma mater Cambridge University. And why pray do I make bold to so do? Because the university has this week issued instructions to its senior members and admissions tutors, who will interview students to determine their entry to these dreaming spires, not to shake the hands of Muslims or of students and applicants who are disabled (I am sure the circular said “physically challenged”).
Some very wise person — and the university exists to nurture these — divined that Muslims, especially females of the faith, and some disabled people, may find shaking hands offensive, against their religion, patronising, polluting, over-familiar, a very minor form of rape etc. So the directive went out.
Several senior members of the university told the newspapers that they resented receiving such instruction. They could very well make up their own minds about the appropriateness or otherwise of extending a hand in greeting.
I suppose if an interviewee turned up in a full face-covering burqa with enveloping floppy black sleeves and kept their arms and hands out of sight or folded within them, any interviewer would feel a bit inhibited about sticking out a paw with a hearty “I am Smithers, the Dean, and how do you do?”
Extending a hand to shake and having it refused for whatever reason is, as a senior common room member might say, “jolly humiliating”.
I must admit that in the subcontinent I am often confused about whether a handshake is called for, appropriate or welcome. At social gatherings in India where I am introduced to a group of ladies in saris, I play safe and join my hands in a smiling namaste all round as names and capacities are recited. In Pakistan I suppose one nods and puts the right palm to one’s chest.
To be honest, one also makes an instant calculation of the degree of westernisation of the person one is greeting. I think I can tell without too large a margin of error whether one or other lady would be prepared to shake hands. How does one tell? I am sure that my friend Suhel Seth or someone who has studied etiquette can put into words whose hand is shakeable. I go by signs: dress, the social milieu in which the meeting is taking place, age, an accent if any word has been uttered, the nature of the smile and by what could inarticulately be termed “body language”.
In my time at Cambridge, there was not much shaking of hands. I remember that at our first meeting John Dewey, my tutor, accepted my introducing myself but didn’t extend his hand and I wondered whether to offer mine. Instead, as I entered his oak-panelled rooms, he sauntered from the piano, which he was playing when I knocked, saying “Yes, of course,” to the drinks cabinet.
“Do sit down, what’ll you drink?” he asked
“Anything, sir,” I said.
“Don’t call me sir and don’t say ‘anything’, say ‘dry sherry’.”
I caught on.
“I’d like a dry sherry, Mr Dewey,” I said.
He turned his head to me in mock astonishment as he poured the drinks.
“Dhondy, you’re a man of taste!” he said.