Left, Right or both?

After a while in a foreign country, you start thinking (maybe too much) about the small things in life. Well, this small things sometimes are pretty big things. Other countries, other habits.

as good as it gets- proably a little bit misleading...

You all know about the Asian toilet – basically there is a hole in the ground. Besides that there are two footsteps. Then there is typically a bucket and a little jar with a handle. One to collect water from a dripping pipe and one to flush the toilet and somehow also to clean your left hand fingers after you have cleaned your – well you know what. The result is usually a wet but clean bottom. As we are in the tropics, the wet will dry off pretty quickly. Good thing is that you don’t have to touch anything like on a Western style toilet. Here you sit or hover and then wipe it off. We feel good about it, the Asian find it disgusting and argue that their version is cleaner. Ok, enough of toilets, the important fact is that in the Asian version it is all done with the left hand, and only with the left one.

Now we are eating, the traditional Indian does not use cutlery but the right hand. Important, the right hand only even if you have to rip naan bread apart or mix up rice and squeeze it to a ball to eat without spreading it over the entire table. Here you basically disable your left hand for obvious reasons (see above).

So far so good – I understand. So here is the question which no Indian could help me with, if you touch your girl/boyfriend, are you allowed to do so with both hands or just with one? And if one, which one?