We're in 2017! The digits of the number add up to 10. When this happens - 10 or a multiple of 10 - I consider it lucky. I don't have a reason for that, besides plain superstition I picked up and practiced as a kid, and want to do now out of vestiges of the habit still remaining, and me carrying it further just for the heck of it. The phenomenon also happened way too often for me to not give any importance to. Here are a few year-numbers and roll-numbers which followed the pattern and strengthened my belief over the years:
Year Numbers:
Year Numbers:
- Year of Birth: 1982 (sum of digits: 20)
- Year of passing out of school: 2000 (number itself is a multiple of 10)
- Year of joining MBA: 2008 (sum of digits: 10)
- Year of passing out of MBA: 2010 (number itself is a multiple of 10)
- 10th Board Exam: 1117992 (sum of digits: 30)
- 12th Board Exam: 1215362 (sum of digits: 20)
- NTSE: 823205 (sum of digits: 20)
- BTech: 00004006 (sum of digits: 10)
- MBA: 24116 (24+116=140, well that's bit of a workaround!)
There must be a few more which I can't recall right now. Perhaps having sets like this with specific properties is common for all people, but I wouldn't worry about that. Like religion, this is something to hold on to when it is convenient.
I was extremely superstitious as a kid. I cooked up long prayers with certain requests repeated specific number of times, like asking to be 1st in the next exam, and then saying those a few extra times so that God could never blame me of falling short. I had a list of shlokas I narrated every morning in my mind standing in front of God's photo before I started for school, with a mandatory orange Hanuman ji ka teeka on my forehead. I learnt those shlokas at Bal Vikas - a center run by bhakts of Puttaparti Sai Baba. They liked all Hindu Gods and not just their Baba.
Traces of agnosticism in me had started emerging then itself, but I often suppressed it as coming first in class was too important for me, and anything that could jeopardize my track record of coming first every year was not worth the risk. This included doubting God, talking to gals, having a crush, talking dirty stuff, etc. But still I once dared to write a letter to Puttaparti Sai Baba questioning him. (All kids at Bal Vikas were given an opportunity to send a letter to Him with someone who was traveling to Puttaparti). I wrote to him point blank that I didn't believe in him, and asked him to do something so that I could believe in his Godly stature. I was told by the Bal Vikas instructors that if the Baba liked someone, he'd even reply to that kid's letter. I never got any reply. I can't tell whether my letter reached him or whether he read it. I got disappointed. But still there were other Gods I could continue with for some more time - they didn't accept letters, so imagination worked and belief could be chosen as long as my mind allowed me.
I used to stare at Gods' pics sometimes and imagine their facial expressions turning from serious to smiling, and believe it really happened coz God blessed me. During pujas which we did as a family on occasions like Ganesh Chaturthi or Saraswati Puja, when we all sat down in the puja room around God and threw flowers, or whatever my mother asked us to throw on God while she read out the mantras, occasionally if a flower bounced back or fell down from the God on to the floor, I gladly took that as a blessing from the God. I was definitely going to come first that year!
Coming first was so important to me that every year the night before the results day, I would hardly sleep and would instead keep praying all night. The trick never failed as long as I did it.
My prayers and everything I did to please God was only driven by my selfishness. Besides doing other necessary things, I didn't want to leave out the God part in ensuring I got what I wanted. Can't afford to make the boss angry. I guess that's the primary driver for most believers as well.
Things started turning in my mind after I completed my 10th standard. I started losing my hair, suddenly - so much that I started looking bald. It was too much for a 16 year old to bear, especially when he was least expecting it. It was unnatural for someone that young to start going bald, and it screwed with my mental state. I had phases of depression. I couldn't focus on studies. If I saw anyone laughing at a distance looking in my direction, I would imagine he was laughing at me for losing hair, and I'd get sad for hours after that. I didn't talk about it with anybody, as nobody seemed to understand what I was going through even when I tried. May be I was just stupid and hair or no hair made no difference in life, and it definitely didn't define who I was. But it took me some time and age to understand that.
Somewhere during this period, my religious beliefs started taking shape. I began to see the meaninglessness of all the God stuff around. Perhaps I also felt betrayed by God for making me go through the painful phase. I somehow cleared IIT JEE without studying as much as I could have if I were my normal self. My rank got screwed though, which I didn't mind. I convinced myself that I was now set for a life decent enough to build on and make big myself, and that I should not bother God with more requests from then on. I should let God focus on the more needy. I stopped asking for stuff when I prayed, and I prayed very little too.
I considered myself an atheist then, but upon further understanding the world we live in, I started turning agnostic, which I am even now. I don't really believe in God as defined by any of the existing religions, as they are too human-centered and unrealistic. However, the presence of a super power, of God, an ultimate creator, is a real possibility perhaps manifested in the extremely intricate yet organized and defined nature of things in the universe. All this could just be out of evolution over billions of years without any intelligent design - neither at the smallest scales, nor at the largest. All this could also have been created, and even designed to evolve, and if that is true, we may also be in a situation where we can never find out who or what created us unless the creator wants us to know. Deterministic framework may be discarded as it's too much detail for someone to bother defining, but there can always be a case made in support of it by saying we are incapable of thinking the way the mind of God works, coz we are only capable of thinking like humans. Even thinking like humans, one can consider the possibility that algorithms are laid out to decide outcomes of events, or some other mechanism for implementing determinism.
So, you see, whatever be our level of scientific achievement, we are still not in a position to tell what's the real deal. Believers only choose to believe. Atheists only contradict them by disproving the myths and then believing in phenomena with some scientific bases which are still not ultimate answers. But nobody really knows the complete story. Why is there something, rather than nothing? So being agnostic is a natural state for a questioning mind which goes by evidence, and never takes a side without 100% proof. I don't discard any possibility which we cannot prove false, and any proof qualifies as proof only if it has no fundamental assumption that cannot be established with 100% certainty. An open mind is the biggest asset of an Agnostic. The downside of such mindset is that such a person is always unsure and fidgety in taking a stand.
Efficiency in the real world is achieved through strong beliefs, gut-feel, focus and being sure. It needs some level of blocking the mind from wandering too much and from being too open or broad in perspective. This is contradictory to the usual leadership gyaan, but as history tells, nobody has really become successful by following gyaan. I believe agnosticism in every sphere of life is not very healthy for material success. But a true agnostic cannot help it. He has to approach material success in an unconventional way. He may choose success of a different kind in the process, or define success his own way. I am yet to resolve these for myself.
