Numbers and Perspectives

From my Infy Blogs - targeting wider audience.

The thought of writing about numbers and perspectives didn’t occur to me because I’m a mathematician (no, no… No advertisement!). But, whenever I see a number or a set of numbers, I can’t resist myself to sum’em up!

0                   This doesn’t come up in the count – but this is one of the greatest discoveries by an Indian. So, in my perspective, I thought I should give 0 the first place! The super power which ‘nulls’ when multiplied by any number! They call ‘Duck’ if you are out without scoring in Cricket! Let’s move on and get off the mark!

1                   Even though 0 comes before this in the whole number series, we call 1 the first! The position, you can say, everyone wants to become! The first unaccounted prime number; first odd number. I can say she’s unchangeable as she gives exactly the same that you multiply.

2                   The sum of my ‘Date’ of birth (D+D). She has the capability of converting everything (odd, even, prime) to an even number when multiplied. The first even number in the counting.

Now, when talking about even and odd, literally, Odd is something very odd(!) and even is something that should balance. Actually, in my perspective, the ‘odd’ numbers are balanced. When multiplied by an odd, it gives odd and when multiplied by an even, it gives even. Whatever you want – that’s balanced! So, I call 1, 3, 5... to be even numbers. 2, 4, 6… all gives even number only, when multiplied by even or odd. So they are “odd”! So, why they named these wrongly? That’s odd!

3                   The first interesting number to me. You multiply any number with this number and sum up the total. It’ll either give you 3 or 6 or 9. Nothing else. In cricket, they call a ‘hat-trick’ if you take 3 wickets in 3 balls. Associating cricket with 3 again, David Shepherd’s unlucky score – 111 has 3 one! Is 3 really an unlucky number or 1? Even Lord Shiva comes with 3 eyes.

4                   The sum of my Date of Birth (DD+MM+YYYY). Again, an even number which gives only even number when multiplied. The first number which is divisible in the count. A boundary in cricket. Infosys is my 4^th employer. My cubicle has 4 seats:-D. They say 4 is the smallest composite number. 4 remembers me a square. Sometimes I remember a video on which, when asked for how many sides does a triangle have, a fellow answered – “umm… Damn, 4?”

5                   I liked this number very much in my school days because it’s easy to say the 5 tables! The product always ends with either 5 or 0. Pentagon or a star can be associated with 5. The Olympic rings are 5. When you divide any number by 5, it’ll give you either no or a finite decimal. The result is not infinitive like when you divide 2 by 3. When I was doing my schoolings, the government used to say “3 children per family”. So, 3 children and 2 parents make 5, a perfect family! And my family is perfect. This is not applicable now! :-P

6                   Six. Raise your two hands up! Nowadays 6 makes me remember Yuvraj Singh! Poor Stuart Broad! Divisible rule for 6 is also very easy to learn – anything that’s divisible by 2 and 3 is divisible by 6. The sum of the first 3 natural numbers is 6. Hexagon! Honey bee-hive!

7                   I would call this number an adamant or non-flexible. When it comes to 7, I feel it is un-controllable. One of the prime numbers for which there’s no divisible rule (Well, I guess there’s one, but it is very very very very hard to understand). It makes me feel like a 7 year old kid not obeying to parents! Rainbow has 7 colors. The 7 raagas – “Saptha Swaram”. 7 Wonders!

8                   Unlucky. One word, which describes 8. In my perspective, most of the people in the world think 8 is an unlucky number. In my case, 8’s very lucky. In other words, wherever I go – 8 follows. Most of my register number during schoolings summed up to 8. Roll number in College is 8. My employee # in Infy sums up to 8. Infact, if you replace 1 for A, 2 for B and so on and sum up my first name, it gives 8! Eight also remembers me of the 8 Lakshmi’s in Hinduism – the “Ashta Lakshmis”.

9                   Even though 8 is my lucky number, I always wished 9 should be. 9 remembers me Chemistry! Well, I’m a very poor chemistry student (Scored 44 out of 150!) and whenever a chemical reaction happens, the professor would tell us that the H2O just evaporates. Disappears. 9 also evaporates when you add any number to it. Disappears! Add 1 to 9 and you’ll get 1 again (Don’t tell me 9+1=10. 10 is again 1+0 = 1). Add 9 to 9 and you’ll get 9 again! Wow! I love it! Nonagon or “Tata Nano” remembers 9 to me!

PS: A few of the number factors were taken from wiki.

Birthday...

Birthday. The one, which comes once in a year. Some might hate it and a lot would love it. Unfortunately, I fall in the few category. Has anyone realized that every birthday that you celebrate – takes you a little closer to your death? You are losing your youth and are being pushed towards the old age! I feel that someone might have realized that every birthday is going to be a step towards death, and fooled the whole world that we should celebrate them! That’s the reason why I fall into ‘the few’ category. The reason may not be justified, but then, not everything in the world is justified. Sometimes I feel that somebody corrupted me. As they say, “I was born intelligent, education ruined me” – that is not entirely true. I’m just going to describe some of the birthday events that I remember. I’m not a kind of person who had quite a lot ‘memorable’ birthdays, so this is not going to be a lengthy article.

The first ever birthday that I really ‘celebrated’ was on 2006, when I turned 23. Well, that was not exactly a celebration of my birthday, but that was the day when the company that I worked decided to go for a ‘day out’. It just happened to be my birthday. So, on that day, we were taken to the famous East Cost Road on Chennai and were dropped inside a resort named ‘Blue moon’. I was there on my first ever new birthday dress with all my friends. There were people hired to conduct a series of events like tug of war and a lot of competitions. Seriously, I did not win a single competition. Although, I did acted in a drama organized by my lead (Srini) and the main theme of that drama is to tease all the company top management! The company that I worked for was a very small one and had about 400 employees only. So, the memorable event happened when one of the organizers asked if anyone had a birthday that day. I was there – pushed by all my friends and in the center. There were two good singers in my company and they were invited to sing the birthday song. I was standing in the middle of the circle, surrounded by the 400 employees around me and was listening to the birthday song, sung by two girls. I would never forget that. Of course, that was followed by birthday ‘bumps’ later.

The second one that I remember was my next, 24^th Birthday when I joined Infosys. I joined Infosys on 18^th of June. Barely know any of my batch-mates, my birthday was soon there. After the training that we had all the time in Mysore, as usual, I was on my room. I got a call from Shyam – one of my best friends till now that we have a combined dinner that day on FC2. Unaware of the celebration arranged there, I went. I saw all my batch-mates, watching me and another girl, named “Anjali” who, also had a birthday on 11^th of July. There were two cakes, one for me and another for her. We cut the cake in front of all my batch-mates singing the birthday song for us and then shared them among us as well. I honestly, did not expect the party at all and it was a big surprise for me. I still count Shyam as one of my best friends – this incident just built the basement.


The final and third one was on my 26^th Birthday. I was posted to Pune after my training in Mysore and have been into one project since then. It took at least a year for me to talk freely with some of the other ‘Tamil’ speaking guys in Pune. Some of them were Mujeeb, Vignesh, Vinodh, Thiru, Ashok, Venki etc. I get to know about these guys when we started playing Cricket. Birthdays, as usual, came every year. This time, almost every year, I got a cake. I had one un-fulfilled wish till then. It was – I was never wished exactly at 12 on any of my birthdays. That may look cheap to some of you, but then I don’t care. I don’t know when, but looks like I shared this with Mujeeb. He counted on my birthday that year and even though I know there’s gonna be a celebration – I was unaware that my so long un-fulfilled wish is going to be fulfilled. I was taken to FC1 by around 11:45 and all my friends were buying the cake for me. We had some chocolates and then at exactly 12 in the midnight, I got a call from Mujeeb. I was searching for him in the FC, but he was not at sight. I thought the venue was moved somewhere, so he was just calling me to come there. I attended the call and he wished me. That was a pleasant surprise! He also told me that – don’t ever say that you were never wished exactly at 12 anymore.


That’s it then. It’s my birthday today and I don’t have any more surprises! Infact, it was quite an ordinary day today. I always feel happy when I write something like this. I wanted to be happy today and so, I wrote this. The facts described above actually, never happened again. Celebration with almost all the employees, Two birthdays at a time and the 12 o’ clock wish – never repeated. I just wanted to re-live in those memories and I did. I don’t have the photos of the last two memorable birthdays, so I just shared the first.

The Marriage of Mujeeb Rahman Moideen - Part 2

As we reached late from the night of Mujeeb Rahaman Moideen’s marriage, we over slept for some time on the Thursday, 19^th of May. Almost everyone woke up in the afternoon. We had a little time before it gets dark, so we decided to go to the Sims Park nearby. The time would be around 2PM when we reached there by bus. I’d proudly say that the bus system and expense in Tamil Nadu is way better and much cheaper than anywhere in India. We paid about 3 rupees a head to reach there. The park was a bit crowded. After all, it was summer time. Everyone would love to come to Ooty!

So, there we were – I, Thiru, Vinodh, Ranga, Yatin, Brabin and Shyam. The park was full of flowers. Variety of them and we were soon taking snaps. We saw some trees – their origin and ages written on. Most of them were from Australia and were more than 100 years old. Some of them were attractive while some of them just stood tall. Newly married (or lovers may be) were seen almost everywhere in the park. We mischievously took some of their photos without their knowledge – considering our willingness to see those girls later! It was fun, with a lots of jokes cracked, some specific insults (not the one which hurts) and so on. The park was soon boring and we came out of it. It was around 3:30PM when we finished our little lunch – some chilli bajji, tea, Mango etc.

Yatin Singh Bhabal.

We still had a lot of time. We were busy talking about where to go and about the time to get there and suddenly it was 4:30. So, it was ultimately decided that we just go to our room, and shut ourselves up! So, this time, since it was down the hill, we decided to walk down. We got a call from one of our buddy – Uma who has just reached Coonoor. We called him and gave him directions to reach where we were. Once he reached, I realized that it was almost 2 years since I met him. Warm hellos and welcomes were there and then we moved down the hill, talking, talking and talking only. It was when Thiru, Vinodh and Brabin insisted that they take some more snacks, we left them there and went down to see the surprise that was waiting for us.

Uma Shankar Rajagopal

We all had our cameras and were busy taking some snaps down the hill. Then, we saw some nice doves. The pigeon family birds were all over there and we saw a man who should be in his early sixties. All his hairs were white, including his moustache and beard. He saw us with a welcome smile, so till Thiru, Vinodh and Brabin finish their little snack, we decided to have a small chat with him. So, we asked him if we can take some snaps, he said, sure.  We went inside his little ‘zoo’ and saw all colours of doves, some nice little Finches, love birds and a parrot. The surrounding was good with all the sounds these birds make and we were busy taking snaps. After this, we had a talk with him. He remembered me of the person ‘Pettaikaaran’ in the film “Aadukalam”.

We initially asked him if this route takes us down to Coonoor, to which he agreed. Then, we asked him about the birds and he said that he uses these birds, especially doves, for racing. “Racing” with doves? That’s the question we asked him immediately. He said yes, racing with doves. We asked more about it and he said there are still races between doves from various part of Tamil Nadu. The race would eventually start from Chennai and at around 6 in the morning, the doves are set free and the one which reaches the destination (Coonoor) quickly, declared winner. Prize money will be there, of course. We asked him about the time taken by these birds and he said, usually it is about 12 hours.


When asked like what happens if the dove, set free at the race, doesn’t return to you at all? He smiled and said they usually do come back. If they don’t, he still doesn’t get angry or worried about it. He said out of the 10 birds in the race, one may not come back! Normally, after 6 in the evening, they will not be able to see. If more time takes for them to reach the destination, they stay somewhere before it gets dark and fly back in the morning to the destination. He said he’s happy feeding them and participating in these races. These many years in Tamil Nadu and still, I have never heard about the races on doves. That was a surprising story that we heard from a person who’s a lover of birds.

We turned our attention from the doves towards the only parrot in the cage and she started to yell at him. He consoled her and asked her to talk to us – to which, she yelled again. He said, she’s not in good mood today, sorry guys! Every finger that we tried to insert into the cage to try and touch the parrot, she tried to bite every one of it. By this time, the snacks eaters came back and we bid adieu to him and walked down the hill. We reached our room with Uma and it started to rain. Summer rains may be rare in the other part of India, but not at Ooty. It was cool and we stopped for some tea. Rain and tea – a very good combination, especially at the place where tea’s were grown.

We played some cards to kill the time and it was good to have an old chap back. We enquired a lot about Uma and then we shared some of ours. In the evening, we had calls from some of our other folks who were making to Mujeeb’s reception. Venki, Ravi and Bijith came on the night of 19^th May. The Reception was on 20^th May. And it has already been a very good trip for us. All the old friends were back again under the same roof. Fun was unlimited, as always!

Dedicating this to the bachelorhood of Mujeeb. Happy Family man!