At some point shortly before the pandemic I discovered that my phone kept track of my steps. I had had fun with pedometers before but never carried them consistently. Or they stopped working. In their heyday they were even among the give-aways at trade conferences, something that a vendor might put their logo on, like a pen or pen drive. Later when things got fancy with Fitbits and smart watches, I went digital in the sense of counting as I walked and noting every 100 on my fingers. Only I’d do paces as that was easier to keep count. Home to vegetable market – 300 paces. Deonar depot to home – 600 paces. If I recall correctly the young cousins in the family even started a spreadsheet to keep a daily tally and compare notes. Heady times!

Thousands of pages have debated the scientific (and ethnolinguistic) basis of the 10,000 steps per day recommendation – apparently the resemblance of the Japanese character for 10,000 万 to a stick figure walking gave rise this during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Ah … 1964! A square number … at least in the year. Back when we used to say years in double digits, and the century went without saying. Not just because it had been the same century for more decades than most people could remember, but also because those were the days when we were so innocent, before the problem that forced us into 4-digit years in computers and in life.

Not like this year, 2025 which we say in full, as we do all years post-millennium. And 2025 is a square either way. 25 is 5 squared and 2025 is 45 squared. The year has some very interesting squares, as I learned from Howie Hua. See video below. This month in particular has some delightful ones. Like Sept 16 2025 which, if written 9 / 16 / 25 is 3² / 4² / 5² and Sept 27 or 27 Sept which either way turns out to be a square.

And so it was with some amusement that I noticed my average this week was very round, albeit not quite square. Oh and today’s date, 4 Sept 2025 is 2² / 3² / 5²

Now to round this out I must say that I do recognize that it is absurd that we count steps, use phones to count steps, use apps that use this data, all of this is topsy turvy at many levels. That said, amidst this topsy turvy world, if having my daily walking tallied on my phone was helping me to keep it up, why not? Problem – I prioritized it over other activity such as dance, yoga and weights. So this year I was actually trying to pay more attention to these even if it meant less walking. Especially now that I had finally managed to compensate for a slow winter by getting my daily average back to a respectable number, I could ease up for the rest of the year. But last month a friend whose office was having a step count challenge asked a few of us if we would want to share our daily count by way of motivating each other. And so I fell off the wagon. Not, however, I am happy to report, at the cost of yoga. It’s all good.

Before I get back to the state of the world, a little fun with the numbers courtesy Howie Hua.

And I wasn’t trying to be mysterious but the “problem” aforementioned was known as the millennium bug or Y2K. It is really unbelievable to think how much people were talking about it in those days. On the day of the new millennium I was far from any fiber optic cable or even paved road of any kind. In Domkhedi, a village that is no more. Ah the fiery speeches we made on that day about how we would challenge the entire paradigm of the world that could be brought to its knees by something like a Y2K bug. And if we could put all hands on deck to debug that, what more could we solve with that level of determination and common cause? Could we not save Narmada and save humanity indeed?

That is a story for another time. Not that we did not write, sing and shout the story then, but it is a story we need to understand anew. For anyone wondering why these mind-wanderings into premillennial aspirations are making it onto the pages of Ask Amma, in addition to “why not?” I will say, stepping into Amma mode, that when I see young people who believed that speaking out against injustice would change things, losing hope even as they risk so much, I think we need to reckon much more seriously with what we have done. And not done. And why so many things in the world are not merely worse but willfully and malignantly so. I struggle to prove myself wrong. If anything these pages need more of this reckoning and this struggle.

ETA: I can’t believe I found one of the articles from that time. India Together website is still there …. wow! Amra gaon me amu sarkar!
Practising the solutions at the Narmada.

Villagers from Domkhedi march to the police camp to ask them why they are there, whom are they serving (1999).

If you are scratching your head wondering how we got onto the topic of square and year numbers, it was after noting that in 1964 a company called Yamasa marketed a pedometer called Manpo-kei meaning 10,000 step meter.