My life in numbers

A 100 point Listicle of the first thing a particular number brings up for me

I love making lists so when I came across this post: My life in numbers, I thought to create one of my own. I'm going to list numbers serially and jot down the first thing that pops into my head for each. The aim is to reach 100.

It wasn’t easy - the first 30 numbers or so came to me naturally, in bulk like birds in the evening sky. After that, I kept adding a note or two against random numbers for a week till I had a only two numbers which held no association for me at all. I am not a numbers person, I see words everywhere so this was such a novel and unique exercise. I also faced the randomness of my brain - some information is super nerdy while some lame jokes. It’s a diverse topography of thought but it’s all mine. Here we go..

1. New beginnings, My rank in school. Numero uno, the aspiration for everything till it starts to wobble.. Ek main aur ek tu!

2. 2pm school bell and the rush post that : how I packed my notebooks diligently-> said goodbyes-> checked out my crush once -> said Hi to my school bus friends, for another game of dumb charades ; Also also, kitne aadmi the? Do huzoor.

3. Optimal number of points while creating a presentation or making arguments. Number of my tattoos, Teen patti, Primary colors

4. My Enneagram type, Char bottle vodka , Char log kya kahenge

5. Weekdays, fingers, palm lines, last digit of every house I stayed in since I moved out of my parents’ place

6. My IMDB rating baseline before I start a movie; the types of wines I know

7. Monica in FRIENDS, 7 khoon maaf, 7 janam, Seven Harry Potter books

8. The perfect number of episodes in a TV series before it starts threatening my sleep schedule or reaching my boredom threshold

9. Navratri , Muses in Greek mythology, Cats’ lives 🐱

10. Sachin, Messi, Dus bahane, Ravan, Dashavatar, Number of years Hachiko waited for his owner to show up <3

    

11. Favorite number, Birthday, Papa’s birthday, 11:11 , Eleven minutes(Paulo Coelho), Rockstar’s release, Age when I should have gotten a Hogwarts letter but got periods instead

12. Number of Months and Sun signs, Chinese zodiac animals, 12 Shiv Jyotirlinga; Cups of coffee you can drink before you die ☕

13. Unlucky (why though?), 13th floor, 13 reasons why, 13 13 13 suroor 🙈

14. Silicon atomic number (NaMgAlSi 🎤)

15. Birth date of my first love, and first crush, birth date of another guy I liked, and the answer I hope for when my dates share their birthdate

    

16. MBTI personality types; 16 Somvar; Sweet sixteen

17. The year of falling in love for the first time, Getting a degree, Going for an MBA and N other major life changes..2017 YOU WERE A INSPIRATIONAL-ROMCOM <3

18. Adulthood; Length of Rachel’s letter to Ross

    

19. First job, First heartbreak, First time spending my own money, First solo travel, First time Latin dancing and First experience of choosing peace

    

20. Birthday of a best friend, year when I got published. Pandemic productivity ; Number of countries I have travelled so far

21. The actual official age for wildest things, looks like freedom ; I got published again! I should be writing more

22. I am feeling 22, everything will be alright 💋

23. Mummy’s birthday ; the age where I tried everything and “grew” 😶‍🌫️

24. Barbie’s birthday

25. Christmas! Silver anniversaries

26. Republic Day and the Laddoos we got in school functions

27. My mother’s age when she had me, my age when I had Pizza in Italy for the first time( hopefully not the last time)

    

28. Salary day, enough said :P

29. Leap year

30. The answer I give after smiling to ” You look 25”

31. Harry Potter’s Day , New years’ Eve

32. Number of active volcanoes in Iceland! The last digits of my Hyderabad address

33. The number of digits required to uniquely specify every human currently alive in binary code (No, I did not Google it, I heard it in a movie)

34. Hitler came to power changing the course of the world, or maybe not

35. The max number of hours I have travelled to reach home after layovers, missed flights and a sore throat.

    

36. Guna in my Kundali and yours

37. Number of stations in Delhi metro yellow line from Samaypur Badli to Huda city centre ( mini flex: I have gotten down at each one of them)

38. Number of inhabited islands of Andamans

39. Minutes taken to make a delicious full meal of Rajma chawal with Rice and Raita

40. Hanuman Chalisa , Forty rules of love

41. Pearl Harbour changing the history of the world

42. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything

43. My Scooty’s number plate

44. Countries Ibn Battuta visited

45. The age I planned to retire when I was in college

46. My longest Duolingo streak before I ditched French for sexier Spanish

47. My house number; Independence day

48. Last digits of the first phone number we had in our home

49. I have nothing but fun fact : 49 is the square of the 7 :D

50. Aspiration of a golden anniversary ; 50 first dates

51. Number of Shakti Peeth, angle of Egyptian pyramids

52. My most common Goodreads goal, Cards in a deck; weeks

53. Tenzin Norgay and Edmund Hillary climbed the tallest mountain in the world

54. Number of countries in Africa

55. Cost of a direct flight from Bangalore to Paris

56. My mother’s age. As I see her wrinkled hands making aloo Paratha for me, I wonder at the number of parathas she has selflessly made over the years, how i can never reach that level of unconditional love ever in my life, how she’s still 35 to me.

57. Battle of Plassey, the only battle year I remembered vividly after five years of memorizing history ; Papa’s age

58. Current length of TBR 📚

59. Ove’s age in a Man called Ove and how loving someone is moving into a house:’)

60. Feels like ageing, white hair; slowness

61. The song I-am-going-to-walk-down-the-aisle-to released! Cause I can’t help

    falling in love with you. Also also, Golden ratio (courtesy Dan Brown)

62. Andy Warhol painted soup cans and started pop art movement ; Bali’s phone extension

63. Number of WWE trump cards, Uno got nothing on it!

64. When I am sixty four🎤

65. My platelet count last year when I was hospitalized for the first time, before a quick ascend 🩸

66. Route 66 in US, a bucket list road trip after Great Ocean road 🚗

67. Channel number of Disney on my TV: a code to enter the world of Wizards of Waverly Place, Dhoom Machao Dhoom, Hannah Montana ✨

68. Best decade of music! Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

69. Roll number in college leading to my nickname-VAT69, Summer of ‘69

70. The money I lost due to a missed flight ; Ye Sattar minute tumhari zindagi ke sabse khaas sattar minute honge 🏑

71. Indo Pakistan war, which I know through movies and songs

    

72. Rule of 72 ; Godfather

73. Sheldon Cooper

74. Number of newspaper cutouts of Aishwarya Rai I had carefully collected over a couple of years in school 🫣

75. Number of books written by Agatha Christie!; my ideal AC temperature

76. 76 reasons ; Shubnam Gill’s jersey number

77. Billy Joel released Vienna in the world, my favorite favorite song ever:)

78. Number of Tarot cards ; my hometown’s city code

79. Picasso’s painting career ; Pompeii eruption

80. Around the world in 80 days, made me wonder if I could do it, But I would want to maybe do it in 81, one day to pause and absorb it all in.

81. 9*9, 3*3*3*3, a waltzing number

82. Virginia Woolf

83. Numerology Angel number

84. Ghats in Benaras; George Orwell’s impactful dystopian book 1984 that made me start a blog immediately after that; 1Q84- my favorite Murakami novel

85. The book that would change my life 30 years later, Surely you're joking Mr feynman was published

86. Cities I have travelled to..

87. Probably my most typed number as it features thrice in my phone number

88. Number of constellations in the sky!

89. Van Gogh painted starry night in 1889

90. Football ; Right angle

91. Country code for India; my parents’ marriage which would have been so cool to attend, scandalous but cool

92. Percentage in 12th

93. My 12th marks in both physics and chemistry. I hated physics, I loved chemistry

94. My scholar number in school which led to my email id which led to a fear for the longest time that people assume I am an year older 😂 ; the year when Jessie and Celine meet on a train

    

95. Birth Year, DDLJ release , Google’s birth year, growing old together literally - just me, Shahrukh and my employer

    

96. A lot of my loved ones came into this world to love me:))

97. God of small things and Harry Potter was out in the world!

98. Body temperature; Year when I watched a movie for the first time in theatre and danced unabashedly on Ladki Badi Anjani Hai in front of the screen

    

99. Anticipation is the word I associate with this number, the pressure of being so close to a shining star..

100. Perfect, the age to which one should live as per Blue zone theory; 100 years of Solitude

     I was shocked at random pieces of information my mind stores like year of Pompeii eruption (I learnt when I visited Italy), but also how 49 would mean nothing to me at all?

     But unlike most of my newsletters, this was a great thought experiment where I was seeing numbers everywhere for a week. For a girl lost in books and letters, it was an interesting prompt to try out..

     Until next time!