What's In A Number?

By Sukanya Venkatraman

3. Why not seven, when seven was such an amazing movie, or 23, where Jim Carrey played a role outside his so called genre, or 5 for that, supposedly my luckiest number according to tickle.com ( yes , I took that quiz. Yes, I was that bored). Perhaps, 6 or 5, which feature in my birth date, or 9 or 11, for obvious reasons. But no, I picked 3. Not because my batch is the third batch of BPHC. No, it isn’t that lame a reason. Rather, it’s because sometimes numbers, like songs hold memories. Sometimes, like words they carry meaning. And three was the first number to pop into my head. It’s frustrating how you can get obsessed with a number, and find symmetry in everyday life corresponding (concurring) to it.

So, one fine day, I became obsessed with the number three. Probably because it was three of us, best friends in school or maybe because it was on the terrace, that I began to think about this number, which was on the third floor of my apartment complex. So that day I saw three crows, three cows walking down the road, three dogs chasing each other….was nature sending signals? No, I don’t believe in things like that. And so it went on. It was then that I realized that sometimes things we define, have meaning deeper than we intended. You seem to feel a connection, and seem to have a reason to believe that you are meant to dig deeper, strengthen the connection and delve into the so-called non-existent.

Did I feel a connection with the number 3? Was it similar to how some musicians get obsessed with certain notes or ragas.

I started thinking about things, like these and questions began to take shape in my mind about well, life the universe and everything. Why is there symmetry in nature, why did we find the need to introduce numbers, why couldn’t they just be a string of letters put together as a word, why zero, why one, why three? Why the connection, the so-called depth, the need to understand? Why three?

And then I began to realize that things don’t have deeper meaning by themselves. They are defined by our emotions, memories and thoughts. We can choose how deep we want to delve into our conception.

So there I was, I didn’t have any special connection to the number three on that particular day because god or nature or some form of divine energy wanted me to. It was because I wanted to. It was the first number that came to my head and in the process of trying to figure out why, I established the so-called connection.

So why three now? Because I connect it to the memory of my first real “thinking” experience. It could’ve been connected to the color of the sky or the song playing on my mp3 player, but I choose to relate it to the number three. Because I liked the idea. Because if someone asked why, I had a story to tell and hence another memory to cherish.

Now you could think what I just said is a whole load crap. Now let me come up with a convincing argument instead, I chose three because it is the number between 4 and 2. 42 is the answer to all the questions about life right?*

*It’s amazing how Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker’s comes to my rescue everytime in my attempt to as convincing as possible.

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