The rule of thumb was never greater: Dawn of 2020 posed a ‘phalange challenge’ to the whole world

With what might aptly be called 2020 i-site, the new year was ushered in with an estimated 1.5 billion people the world over giving it a rousing thumbs-up by pressing these digits down on the messaging screens of their mobile phones to send out greetings on a global social media platform billed to be the largest on the planet. The site logged 100 billion New Year greetings worldwide, with 20 billion of these being posted in India, which reportedly has 400 million users of the platform.

Far from twiddling their thumbs in idleness, Indians were putting their digits to assiduous use to meet the ‘phalange challenge’. Despite this enthusiastic effort, however, the county’s cyberspace thumbprint was overshadowed by that of the global average that recorded 73 messages per user as compared with India’s 50.

Seasonal messaging and texting times are part and parcel of an evolutionary process, which might be described as the thumb of all things. It is the prehensile, or opposable, thumb that, by allowing its possessor to grasp tools, enabled Homo sapiens to become Homo faber, capable of creating artefacts and scripting the story of civilisation. The legend of Eklavya, Arjun’s rival in archery, who is made to literally bow out of the contest by Drona who demands from him this digit as guru dakshina, underscores the importance of the rule of thumb.