The Birthday Paradox
Saturday, August 15, 2009
It's that time of the year again. Amazing how you blink your eyes and the rock you live on goes around the sun one whole time. It's been a long time. You must have forgotten how I sound. Except for my 211 'followers' here who occasionally heard me shout, whisper and cough.
Last year I tried an experiment. It was only modestly successul and the Elbonian government still stands. This time I won't run an experiment on you. I'll just tell you some tales and then wonder out loud.
Turns out that apart from being the birthday of the Internal Combustion Engine, Oersted, Danielle Steele, Johnny Lever, Rameez Raja and Halle Berry, yesterday was my birthday too. But what caught my fancy is how the Indian calendar conspired this time to make it the birthday of this Krishna dude too. He was this awesome guy who played around with cool weapons. I am not sure about his name though, for he was a cunning, power-broking kingmaker with multiple identities. Indeed, he was like a cross between Machiavelli and Jason Bourne.
One of his claims to fame is the time he infiltrated an army under the cover of an extremely chatty driver. He drove around his ride, some famous soldier called Arjun, to his favorite bar daily. Our man used to bore this Arjun guy with a lot of totally random philosophy. It was all part of the plan. One day he went on for hours at length after taking care to have locked all the doors of the vehicle. Arjun, who had already had eight pegs and two joints, went from being indifferent to irritated to hysterical to stark, raving crazy. Then our man, in the privacy of the vehicle showed him what he called the 'mega-me' with a solemn nod, smug smile and a mano cornuto. And that's when Arjun really, really lost it. He ran around pulling at his hair and shooting his relatives. Quite a stinky affair, if you ask me, but they did win the war in the end.
Now all this doesn't mean a thing to someone looking for some encouraging co-incidences to make a superstitious world believe that this year is going to be extra good for him. Here's what does: When he wasn't pushing people off the cliff of sanity, our hero was one helluva ladies' man! He was tall, dark and handsome and he liked his women in their birthday suits and if possible wet. So one day, while vacationing back in his village, he played his flute(just one of the many skills he picked up in spy school), hypnotized all the ladies living nearby and led them into a lake. (This would in later years give rise to the tale of the Pied Piper. Of course they would change the characters and theme and wouldn't acknowledge this fact. Instead they would make up an entirely fictional account of the origin.) Then while the confused women decided to take a bath as they already were wet, he stole their clothes and later appeared grinning on a tree branch. (This would inspire Lewis Caroll to come up with an equally elusive cat in his novel. And he too, wouldn't accept this origin.)
Even though all those involved in this little 'incident' enjoyed it, the elders of the village disapproved. "Not to worry," he told his playmates and proceeded to make arrangements for night-long parties in an undisclosed location. They played trance music and danced around in circles, only taking breaks to refill their glasses. This went on till a boring, but bossy bunch of bozos bearing bright bronze badges and bulging beer bellies, busted the blooming outfit. Krishna left town, never to return again.
So now, the questions I've been working my way upto, the ones I contemplate while this plays on in the background are: Will the girls, the ones who unlike me, believe in God, imaginary friends and other weird stuff, read much meaning into this co-incidence and suddenly think of me as a debonair lover? Will they want me to do kinky stuff? Will it freak me out and do I want attention from such crazy girls?
P.S. The title refers to this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
