No Escape from Numbers

Years ago, a friend who loves lecturing was making an attempt to make a block head like me understand the meaning of cardinal and ordinal numbers – which I did not make much of at that time as both pointed to a sequence. Only that the cardinal sequence went as one, two three ………and the ordinal as first, second third ……… and so on. Years later , now I do realize the significance of numbers. It is the numbers that decide so many things - for example which party is going to form the Government, who is going to be the PM or the CM as the case may be. So much so that even movies’ names had to be like, Ek Musafir Ek Hasina, , Do Thug, Do Gundey , Do Bigha Zameen , Do Dooni Chaar ,Do Kaliyan, Do Raaste, Teen Deviyan , Teesri Manzil, Five Rifles , Saat Hindustani, Nau Do Gyarah etc etc. Even we have had masterpieces like A Tale Of Two Cities, Three Musketeers etc .
The phobia attached to the number thirteen worldwide is still an enigma . However one may recall that in a popular Bollywood number there is counting from Ek do teen….. to Barah terah .
Phrases like First Love, -as also the song -pehla nasha pehla khumar -are very popular and so are first crush, first impression, First born , second thoughts , third world, fourth column, sixth sense , seven day wonder, seven year itch , the eight fold path cloud nine , ten commandments , which are so frequently used that they do not need any explanation.