The day god is on leave

Ever since I was introduced the world of numbers number crunching has been a firewalk for me and memorizing numbers - a hard nut to crack. Be it dates, phone numbers, years or even my own birth day I found myself at the foot of Mount Everest. I am an autarkic human being always except for instances in which I had to don the role of a pantomime artist or reduce the toughness of my voice and ask some one in the examination hall ‘Today’s date, please?’ The query made certain scoff with a sense of mockery “You don’t know today’s date, dude?” I never answered back and most often smirked with one reply ‘Albert Einstein didn’t knew his own phone number and what is the necessity in knowing ones number when we have a diary , calendar or people around who are accessible for information?’ Most often the retaliation made the combatant wag down his tail.

My daily routine starts with enjoying the beauty of nature by giving my ears to the natural sounds amidst the morning calm in contrast to the cacophony of the city on the way to work. There is one particular day; I tune myself in such away that everything that the ear receives will have a special filtering since there is an attack in the air always. All for the sole reason; like every other creature in this cosmos, I don’t want myself to be bamboozled by some one or be the object for some one to yell at the top of his or her voice “April fool”.

It was my maternal uncle who made me ostracize myself from anything on 1st of April. It was a fine Sunday morning and I was sipping coffee in a cozy couch in the verandah, eyeballing passersby who were treading the gravel road in front of my house .Mean while the gate squeaked and it was my maternal uncle.

‘Some one threw a cigarette and Tharang cinema is on fire. You didn’t hear the fire force bell?’ He said slipping off his chappals.

I was totally flabbergasted and within minutes I was on my rally bicycle scurrying towards the picture house. I pedaled hard and wanted to be there in a jiffy .It was not my love for the theatre nor being a witness for a macro attack of fire. I had a penchant for collecting whatever I came across, be it stamps, coins, match box stickers, cigarette packs etc. Thus I was a philatelist, numismatist and whatever rolled into one. My cigarette pack collection had an abrupt ending when my grandma mistook that I was a connoisseur of cigarettes even though I never had one in my life.

The new corner shop near my alma mater made me venture into a new hobby. Old film bits which once created chemical imbalances in people’s minds and made them howl, cry, and laugh. Sunset meetings with my cousin made me learn the art of projecting films and my family had the privilege of watching still emotions of Amitabh and Dharmendra on the white kitchen wall. At thirteen I took every family member by storm and was filled with pride, even the Lumiere brothers wouldn’t have been that proud. I was not the sole customer of the corner store. Since it was a monopoly and pure sellers market we were not entertained to have any selection .So there involved trade between the customers of the bits. Barter system was followed and Amitabhji’s bit was the one which fetched the maximum exchange rate. A close up of the six foot two tall fellow was worth ten other bits.

Several frames reeled through my mind like a movie–theatre getting immersed in to a pool of fire, operator unwinding the film from the reel and throwing it out, helmet clad fire men with thick hose pumping gallons of water to set the fire off, people at each other's throats to get film rolls .No I wont give that to any one. I said to myself. The feeling made me pedal with great zeal.

Within ten minutes I was at the scene, perplexed to see everything in apple-pie order. I enquired about the fire at a nearby shop. The shopkeeper smiled and said ‘some on has fooled you like any thing; today is 1st of April, don’t you know?’ That was a revelation for me- A big one...

From child hood days I have noticed that no one possess birthday on1st of April. There may be two reasons, either god is on leave on 1st of April or Moms know the art of postponing delivery. This is scope for wide some research in this topic. The hypothesis is “No one is born on 1st of April”. Will the null hypothesis be proved or not? Only time will tell.