The Number 21

12-09-09

For those of you who have watched the film The Number 23, this post might seem to be an exaggeration of the events in the film. But actually, this one is no adaptation of that movie, nor am I anyone like the character Topsy Kretts. But the central point about this post revolves around a number, just like in the movie. Its true I had been haunted by the number 21 long before I even saw the movie. I saw the film just a month back, but I was deeply provoked to write up about my story. In fact it’s not a story. It’s just an account of instances where the number 21 had been ‘following’ me. Even when I am about to start exhuming the experiences I’ve had with this number, my fingers tremble. There’s a cold chill down my spine just thinking that I am actually writing about this.

For most of the first experiences I’ve had with this number, I took them as mere coincidences. But later when things happened to unravel, the occurrence of this number and its impact on me seemed to be obvious. I even got so obsessed with this number that I looked for a twenty-one in every numerical encounter I had, may it be the license plate of my car, my credit card PIN number, my cell phone number, everything. I added or subtracted the digits of the numbers to see if they made up to a 21. At this point, for those of you who feel I’m eccentric, I say just fuck off. The others may continue reading. This is no story, no piece of exaggerated figments of imagination, no day dreaming. It’s about my life.

The most striking thing that I noticed is that the occurrence of the number 21 is meaningful. If I look for and ‘mine’ for this number, I don’t find it. But it persists. I could see it. 21 came out to light only when I looked back. I could not find it when I searched for it, but it came to me. For instance, just as I’m writing this post, it struck me that I am 21 years old. Why didn’t I write about this last year? Or maybe four months back, when I was only 20? I was born on the 12th of May. Twelve is 21 reversed. These two instances just sprouted up in my mind. I never thought of the date 12th otherwise. Seeing such a peculiar pattern, I tried to add the digits of my complete DOB, but couldn’t find any 21. If I dig for it I don’t find it, but it appears very cleverly!

The occurrences got more frequent, or maybe that’s cuz I was preoccupied with it that I expected a 21 in everything I did or thought of. Let me tell you about a recent instance. It happened less than a month ago. 15th of August to be exact. It is the day of Indian Independence and we had programs at college. As I got to college, there was a quiz going on and three of my friends were attending it. They called me to join them. Sajna and Rasmi had the answer sheets. Prashant was teaming with Sajna and Rasmi asked me to join her (apparently to help her in a History Quiz- my most loathed subject!). The questions were projected onto the white board and she asked me to give her the answers. I saw she hadn’t answered a question and the question was to give the year in which something had happened (I don’t exactly remember the question). As the final bell rang, I told her the answer could be 1921. I said it with the 21 in mind. She was dubious and did not write the answer I suggested. Finally the answers were being read out and the answer to that particular question turned out to be 1921. I just looked up at the board and was stunned to see that it was the answer to the 12th question. I had till that second, not noticed that it was the 12th question. This is no lie. At this point, if you don’t trust me, Rasmi is a witness. You can abandon this and still leave if you feel I’m being ridiculous, cuz I don’t give a fuck. Period.

This is how it all began. I started noticing the number 21 when it appeared twice or thrice in a same particular context. It was when I was watching a film on HBO that I first noticed this strange thing. I don’t remember which film it was, but the shot goes something like this- a man (an investigator in disguise) comes to a Hospital office and demands to see the mortuary. He is turned down, who goes on to bribe the keeper of the mortuary and gains access. The man asks the number of the compartment in which the particular dead body is kept. I, out of random told myself it is 21. The next second the mortuary keeper replies the man “its 21”. This prediction of mine did not in fact fascinate me back then. I was just thrilled that ‘I predicted it was coming’. But when a similar circumstance occurred and I again predicted the number 21 in some other TV program, even before the person answered, I again turned out to be right. It was then that I first actually noticed the number. At first I thought it was just a déjà vu. But later on it was turning out to be reality.

The next little story I am about to say might seem illogical for at least a few. Having had this thought of the number 21 for quite some time, this might seem like a lie. There was a recent room shuffling in my hostel and I was shifted to room number 28. It was just a month back that I actually happened to notice that the room in which I had been staying for the past one and a half years was Room Number 21. During my long stay in that room, I never even for once bothered about the number of my room, which is so well painted onto the wooden door- the painted label that I saw every day umpteen number of times, the number which I wrote down on the plenty leave application forms every time I went home, the number which was written down in the hostel fee receipt every month. Now you might feel that merely staying in one particular room, with a particular stupid number, is just a coincidence. I agree. But this room gave me a lot. It took me through everything, this room shaped me. In fact it changed me to the man I was not. I went through all of the dull things while my stay in this room. Now looking back, it’s all the past. But room number 21 was the saddest room- for me. I had stayed in 5 other rooms in the same hostel, but 21 was not at all like any of them. For once when I first moved in to 21, I thought it was the brightest room in OCSC. It is true in the literary sense that it had ample sunlight. But with the passage of time, it got darker and darker. Eventually I hated to even enter my room. I came in only to sleep at night. I either spent time in Prashant’s room or Deepu’s. I had a PC in my room, but I was never interested. My friends teased me, mocked me and took me as an outcast because I would sit with them watching them stick on to their desktops and laptops. They would say “…Anup has a PC of his own, but still he doesn’t play on that. He wouldn’t install any games on his own PC, but accompanies (or in their sarcastic sense ‘disturb’) everyone else…No one knows what Anup has got in his PC, cuz he doesn’t let anyone near it…Anup is a loner…Anup is self-occupied…Anup is a pessimist…Anup is cynical…paranoid…” For a while a dear friend of mine even christened me “Moody Anup”. I tasted everything while in this room- love, hatred, anger, compassion, accusations, allegations, even the slightest peccadilloes were converted to criminal acts and breaches of trust by my closest of pals. Protecting one’s interest transformed into cheating on another, in the latter’s perspective. There are only three people in my life who called me a ‘cheater’. And all of them branded me that beautiful attribution while I was in 21. One of them went to the extent of saying I was “insincere”. In their eyes, I was a cheater, a traitor, and the worst of everything a man can be denominated. It was too late by the time they realized that they were all misunderstandings. ‘Twenty-one’ gave me tears. I was sad most of the time, dark within. Even the painted smile was flaking off from my face. I had lamented and wailed. My heart bled. Everyone seemed to walk away from me. Everybody were preachers and saints. I was the only sinner. They made muted shouts – “…believe him not…hate him...loathe him…get him beaten…”. My once closest ones became my own executioners. They apparently had vanguards of protectors before them, who were also up in rage against me. Some of them realized later they were wrong, some not yet. But that’s my least of concerns. Because they are either strangers or very less of an acquaintance to me – third parties.

It would be insufficient if I did not mention about the academic implications during the three semesters I spent in this room. From being optimistic, I became complacent, then slowly turned to being pessimistic and I eventually reached the pinnacle of hopelessness. The darkness crept into everything, one obvious one being its reflection in my GPA. While I had a fair 7.3 GPA in my third semester, it had come down to barely over 7.1 in my fourth semester- that was the time I was turning to get complacent with what I got. The graph collapsed and in my fifth semester, it had come down to as low as a meager 6.3. That was the time I gave up luck and left everything to fate. I was in fact showing signs of hopelessness towards the end. To better give a more graphic picture of my totally gross performance, I had a GPA of 7.96 in my first year of engineering. I was almost an 8-pointer back then. History. Obviously, I was not in room number 21 back then.

You may find it silly, but the first mobile phone that came to my home was the Nokia 2100. The first television that we bought was a 21-inch one. The year we built our own house and moved in was 1992. The digits add to 21. You might well say it’s just “a twenty-one”. But I say “it’s the twenty-one” which lurks around and manifests in the most unnoticed of circumstances- the 21 which is so obvious in its manifestations.

Quite a few might be aware by now that the End of Days is predicted to be on the 21st of December 2012. There was a documentary in History Channel over a year back that showcased the History of time, how the Mayan Calendar predicted the future, how the predictions of Nostradamus came true. Even the internet showed up weird patterns during phenomenal events like the 9/11 and Tsunami. The Mayan Calendar ends abruptly on December 21st 2012, so does many other predictions from Oracles and chronicles. Moreover, this date has implications on the internet. And all of these and many other sources independently predicted the same precise date for the World's end. Whats even more shocking to me is the date. Its 21-12-12. See?

As I am finishing up this post, I got the weirdest of all realizations. I was shocked to see the way ‘twenty-one’ infested itself in it, in this very post. Just go up to the beginning of the post and see the date. I wrote the post on 12th of September. ‘12’ is 21 reversed. You think that’s it? Well, just add up the digits of the date. Goodbye…