I see my wife working round-the- clock and making a list in her pocket diary every morning. She would snub me in case I dare to disturb her. Her list includes the dhobi, ayah, vegetables, clothes, money to be drawn, FDs to be renewed and ads to be put. She would place the list on the table. By evening, she studiously checks it to update the progress of the day’s transactions. The following morning, another 20 points would be added to the little diary. An affair of listing, updating all her life, is indeed the life of most conscientious housewives!

Most of the professionals are guided by the lists, the businessmen by their catalogues. I don’t know of today’s politicians but men like Nehru kept a day’s list of activities which became the basis of his diaries, autobiography and speeches. Napoleon Bonaparte used to scribble his notes often in bathrooms or when he lay sleeping on straw in snow-swept cottages in battlefields. His aides ensured that each piece of paper, however dirty and wet, was retained. No better memories and reflections have thus far been written by any other military commander.

Listing means and often turns out to be numbering. It is as a result of this phenomenon that a day got divided into hours, minutes and seconds. Seven days make a week and four weeks a month. Likewise, came the year, decade, century month and so on. Historians have divided the total period of recorded or presumed history of the mankind into ancient, medieval, modern and the current or the contemporary. There came five elements, five senses and anyone with uncanny sense was accorded a sixth sense. Those of us who got enchanted with past lives, ignoring the present, came to believe in the 12 signs of zodiac.

The orientals began to take the listing and numbering to a different calculus. The Chinese, for example, associate their calendar year to the animal kingdom, the year of monkey, the bird the fish. Most Indians do believe in numbers, the baptisation of a child and the wearing of the sacred thread at a particular age, a ceremony on the 13th day of death or after a year and then annual remembrance on a fixed frequency.

I must end up this little piece with an explanation of the endeavour I made at the numbers under Pakistani fire. I was commanding a company of some 120 gallant Gorkhas which was part of the attacking division against Pakistani defence at Chawinda. As the preparations got underway, reconnaissance was made and orders given for assault that night, I called the Company Havildar, Maj Rana Bahadur to coordinate the movement of the ammunition echelon and movement of the wounded on capture of the objective by us. I saw him ferociously scribbling through his war order book. The points which I gave to the CHM totalled to 12. A check-back which is regarded mandatory in war showed that he was missing one very vital order. As the Pakistani aircraft joined with their artillery in bombardment attack on us, Maj Rana and I dived into a trench. I asked him to show me his note-book. I was hesitatingly shown a blank page by the CHM but it had been neatly numbered 1 to 12. His check-back for the eleven points marvelled me. After the Pakistani aircraft flew back making some near misses, I asked him to come back again with the points. This time he recited all the twelve from his memory exquisitely. No wonder during the action he did everything as a drill.

The list making and the list giving is a fine art, a symbol of an organised mind but this list noting by a Gorkha NCO has always been mind-boggling to me. Numbers can bloom a genius in some of us.