Subir Roy: Numbers first, and rounder the better

Bill Gates has just revealed that in the early days of Microsoft, as a workaholic, he would keep a tab on how hard the rest of the crowd worked by memorising car number plates. So looking out onto the parking lot, he would know who was in and who was not. In itself, the story is, of course, true, but does not tell all. For example, someone could be in, but at the cafeteria. The truth may be that Mr Gates found it easier remembering numbers than names.

If that be so, then he would not be one of a kind. A good friend of ours from college days was considered a wizard because of his incredible felicity with numbers. It stretched from great scores in mathematics to being able to remember any number of car registration plates. This led to him often saying, as we walked down a road, "I know that number," and then following it up (mind the sequence) with something like, "It must be so and so."

This being driven foremost by numbers is, of course, with us right from the time we learn to count. Nearly all of us began with the nursery rhyme, "One two, buckle by shoe/ Three four, knock on the door/ Five six, pick-up the sticks" and so on.

But what sets apart some of us is the habit of marking stages in life with numbers. Hence, it is that we have the Clay Walker song, which remembers a nursery school sweetheart, from the well-known "One two" nursery rhyme days, but goes on to express grown-up emotions in the subsequent stanza, "One two, I miss you/ Three four, I walk the floor/ Five six, come back quick".

To the majority of us who are numerate only in a very rudimentary way, it is so convenient to have life's milestones marked more often than not by round figures. The big event in my life, as I grew up and left school, was to land my first private tuition job, which allowed me to earn my own pocket money - Rs 100 a month, out of which I gave my mother Rs 50. Both of which were princely sums, considering it was the late sixties.

In keeping with that, the first job, as a trainee sub-editor at The Statesman in the early seventies fetched a fabulous Rs 400 per month. But numbers coming before names really came home in my life when, on joining the Times, I moved to Delhi in the late eighties. We, a group of lateral entrants (quite a novelty in the venerable paper which was till then very tradition-bound), became the envy of the rest of the office because of the pay package that we got and were collectively referred to as "dus hazaris" (The 10,000-wallahs). Again, a princely sum in the newspaper world in the late eighties.

What numbers can say sometimes depends on how wicked a mind you have. When our first child arrived punctually in record time (as the Rajdhani Express did in those days) after marriage, it provoked a lot of twitter among friends who gratuitously advised the wife and me to, henceforth, go a bit slow.

But, the gang was really reassured when one friend with an absolutely perverse mind visited us in Delhi and reported back that all was well. He told the assembled crowd at the Calcutta Club amidst guffaws that I, the non-believer, naturally did not care for the missionary position and had instead sought out a house which bore the house number "69". Why anybody would want to display his chosen mode of family planning by wearing it on his sleeve or letterbox is beyond me.

When we shifted base from south Delhi to Gurgaon, despite being totally un-superstitious and with zero regard for numerology, I was nevertheless amused to note that life continued to be driven by round figures. Distance to the office at ITO was almost 30 km and it took one hour to get there. But life got complicated as traffic exploded and the hour became an hour and 45 minutes. What remained of your life if you spent three hours and more in a car daily, I thought, and decided it was time to move again.

The best thing about Bengaluru was not the weather but the fact that it took just under half an hour to cover the 5 km to get to work. And again, things began to get awry when the half an hour kept stretching as traffic grew. The great thing about being done with endless journeying daily was that when time came to call it a day, the round number thing remained in play. It made so much sense to hang up your boots at 60; no more, no less.

subirkroy@gmail.com