Thursday, March 02, 2006

Numbering numbers.....!!!!!!!

Numbers..!!! Have you ever wondered how important the role of numbers are in human life or they challenge the basic principle of life...i.e. Humanity!!!
Number of times I think of numbers, I get shattered into numbers, taking me into innumerable time zones, as if I am riding on my Time Machine - "Discovering myself to....Eternity."
I remember of my first day to school when I was assigned a number a roll number,,Oh!! just slipped I was given admission number first which was as cornful as I am, it was 4209 and the officer would go on to call me Mr. 420 giving me the first blow to reality and the mere insignificance of my name. Coming back to my roll number, I was told to remember the number as teacher would call it every day to mark my presence (and the trend still continues), thereby creating a boundary in between and again challenging the very essence of my name and this was the second blow.
As I accoustomed myself with my number, a third blow came in, everyone asking me about the position (number again) in the class as our results came in. No one would care for the innumerable sleepless nights and days of hardwork that I put in to get to that coveted number one position in the class. This made me discover the numbers (positions/ranks) in the numbers as well, some consequential and some of zero value --A fourth blow straight on my flat nose.
As the number of years passed by, I remember a moment during class 10th when our examination number came in to sit for the board exams, each one of us would add the digits of the number and add till it becomes a single digit number and would turn us into red or blue or yellow, depending upon the pre-conceived notion of number being lucky or unlucky.
Dreaming of numbers..........it takes me into a different realms altogether. Number a chest number, a race number, Qaidi number, Billa number 786(of movie Deewar fame), number to get basic ration, number to get a movie ticket, number and more numbers. My bike number, car number and yes very important necessity of today's youth a mobile phone number. For India its about the number on the Sensex, population growth number, a GDP growth rate number and some more numbers and many more numbers....
Numbers so important and yet so insignificant, as I dont remember the number of times I have been loved, Blessed, Cared, Saved, Laughed, number of times I have fallen in Love with every second girl, number of times expecting a message of someone.....
And yet I remember something about numbers,,, the number of times I have been slapped, number of times I have been treated badly, Scolded, number of times I have been hurt....forgetting number of times I have done the same or given pain to others. And this gave me several blows enroute my discovery. The mere counting of these numbers(in terms of number of blows) show the very importance, numbers play in our life.
With my birth a number was added and with my last breath a number would be subtracted. It would be trivial of number of years i will live but number of faces I bring smiles to, number of faces I can save, number of trees I can grow, number of souls I can create........
.........Thus, leading to a discovery of qualitative nature of an inconsequential quantitative number, making it yet consequential...!!!!