Sometimes, Numbers Kill It

I adore numbers. The shapes, the sounds, the significance.. and their innate saladity. You toss them around, you add dots and dashes, you bring in some variations and voila! Something new!

Number plates fascinate me. I'm forever trying to make some sorta connection between the digits and letters on there. Math operators can be your best buddies during long drives and now you know how. MH-43-AN-2362? I promise you there's more to it than meets the eye. It's a Sindhi surname, for fuck's sake!*


You know, sometimes, you think. No, that's wrong - sometimes, people come at you from all sides, all at once, and tell you they expect you to think. It's what most profs this semester have been emphasizing. How our thoroughly looked down upon, much-abused education system doesn't require/teach us to think and how they, the preachers, are made of a different cloth entirely.

They insist their word isn't the final word - just the first word, and only if we want it to be. Thrilling, but woah! You really want to know what we think? I think that's something I'm gonna take away from Sem III, BMM. That's it's okay to tell people what I think - "IMHO" type. That they might actually want to know. I might just graduate from dishing out opinions on aaltu faltu stuff to things more solid. I look forward to it, I do =)


Upar ka stuff was unrelated, but whatever. So I attended my first lecture of media studies this morning. Interesting. And it blunted the number-joy for me somewhat, albeit temporarily. We were discussing media censorship and organized media blackouts during emergencies. What of it stayed on in my head all day? Some emergencies. How we refer to them, if you prefer specifics. 7/7, 7/11, 9/11, 26/11.. Everything's a number, everything's a statistic.

Am I turning into a media kid, hoping to dramatize the whole thing? Hoping to change 13/4 to Baisakhi Bloodbath? I think not. But while numbers still fascinate me, I think sometimes we need something more humane.

* MH-43-AN-2362. 4-3=1; 2^3=8. 8-6=2. 2/2=1. That's MH-1-AN-1. Lets turn the 1s ti Is. Mhiani. Sounds like a respectable Sindhi surname to me. Doesn't do anything for you? Tal Re, Ja!