Gruesome Numbers

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"The figure of Rs 6 lakh crores (6 trillion) that has been reportedly embezzled is nonsense. It is no more than Rs 6000 crores (60 billion)"... News Report

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Hardy is reputed to have said that all integers below 10,000 (or some such fancy number) are personal friends of Ramanujam.

Great company! Facebook ?

Sorry for that jibe, but all integers above 42,000 (my last pay at KGP) mean nothing to me. You can have them all.

I don't care for large numbers although I had to deal with them in Physics grudgingly (particularly in deciding whether to use Classical or Quantum Statistics for a given system).

Varun once pointed out that I goofed in writing that the age of our Universe is about 15 million years instead of 15 billion years. But in the context of adding that number to my 68 years to get my 'true' age, it made hardly any difference to me...only feeling a wee bit older and seniler.

I can sympathize with that King who was so impressed by Chess that he promised its inventor to keep on donating him rice grains in the series 1, 2, 4, 8...right up to the 64th square...poor chap... he was bamboozled.

When I joined my Pre-University Course in the College of which my Uncle was Principal, I was staying with him (1957). He was a regular addict of All India Radio's News at 9 PM, read by Meliville De Mello (he used to sink into his dreamless before it was over at 9.15). The prelude to this prestigious program was a cuckoo clock going cuk...cuk...cuk...till it was exactly 9.00. And he used to routinely adjust his erratic time piece.

I was just 13 then but I thought I was precocious in Physics, and reasoned that the radio waves beamed from Delhi take quite some time to reach our South Indian town and so my Uncle's time piece must be in error.

I then took out my brand new Clarke's Mathematical and Physical Tables and did my first original calculation and you know what happened.

And of course I learned that the exponential series (e^x) always converges however large x is...SDM used to say that the factorial in the denominator will catch up by and by and kill the mind-blowing numerator...(SDM was a non-vegetarian).

But apparently the innocuous harmonic series diverges!!!

I gave up...

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To be gruesome, the number need not be large...it depends on the context.

In 1977 I was traveling from Tadipatri to Renigunta by the Bombay-Madras Express. And a charming young gent entered our cabin in Kadapa...he had that aura of rustic beauty about him that I still recall with pleasure.

Kadapa at that time was notorious for murder and mayhem, faction fights, revenge murders, honor killings and such. Indeed, the residents of the town were known to come to fatal fights over precedence and protocol across a paan-shop.

The gent dumped his zip-bag on the upper berth and sat amongst us and started narrating wonderful local stories from which I gathered that he belonged to a well-to-do Reddy family.

A young chap carrying guava fruit in a basket came up with his ware and was beckoned by our Reddy who asked for half a dozen fruit. The young one handed the six and was about to go away when Reddy Garu asked him to cut them up into equal pieces and serve them to all of us.

The vendor said brusquely that he didn't have a knife.

Reddy than asked the chap to open his zip bag above and fetch the knife in it.

As the fruiterer gamely dipped his hand in and brought out the 'knife', he shrank like one bitten by a cobra and fell on the knees of our Reddy.

For, what came out was a shining dagger with a golden handle studded with gems.

Reddy asked him to have no fear, took the dagger and with deft strokes sliced them into equal pieces and handed them to all of us.

The staggering fruit-guy came to senses and shiveringly asked:

"Sir, are you the Parandhama Reddy whose photo was there in last Sunday's Papers?"

Reddy gave a delicious smile...but kept quiet.

"Sir, those eight members of the Venku Reddy family last week..."

"No. I was away at Kurnool that day. My eldest brother called me up at 8 PM and asked me to go to the Police Station and chat up the Sub-Inspector till midnight...

...And you silly fellow...don't go about exaggerating...only seven were taken out; the last brother escaped..."


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