You Are Unique...

"Don't let anyone tell you that you have to be a certain way. Be unique. Be what you feel."  -- Melissa Etheridge

Few days ago, I was looking how actually Astrology works and what exactly Kundli was. This has always been a topic I had thought about. I mean, from a distance it looks stupid, but then, it's more than thousands of years old. Now, I don't know if this thing actually works or not, But I was curious to know what it was all about. And then, I had an idea!!

Before I can really share what the idea was, I have to explain to you, how and what Kundli actually is. Kundli, or Birth Chart, is a symbolic representation of the positions of planets and stars at the time of the birth of a person. These positions of planets and stars have a impact on a person's life. The way, these planets are located at the time of your birth, governs your life. Now, the general Vedic Birth chart has 12 houses or 12 blocks, numbered from 1 to 12. And then there are 10 other objects. The way these 10 objects are placed into the 12 blocks, is a Kundli, which affects oneself. Here is an example how a Kundli looks like.

The 10 objects placed in 12 blocks.

Now, I don't want to get into the minute details of how this actually works. But I think we know enough for the idea. The date of birth, the time of birth and the place of birth governs where the 10 objects would be placed in the 12 blocks. And from this, predictions are made for a person. Hence, we can assume two persons with the same Kundli, will have same characteristics. This was exactly my idea. If two persons, having the same Kundli are same, then how many people are there on this earth which are same or similar as me?

And so, to know this, I had to go to the Mathematics way, and apply my Permutation and Combination skills. There are 10 objects which are to be placed into 12 blocks. So, let's draw 10 objects.

_   _   _   _   _   _   _   _   _   _

Now, these 10 objects have choice in going any of the 12 blocks. So,

12   12   12   12   12   12   12   12   12   12 

Which gives us a total number of cases as 12 to the power 10, which is a whooping 

61,91,73,64,224

Whoa!! Every person is unique to about 61,91,73,64,224 people. 

So, after figuring out, what exactly the magic number is. I tried to relate this to some facts. But I was surprised!

• I first tried to relate this with the population of Delhi, which has a population of  1,10,07,835 people. I concluded I am a unique person residing here. ☺
• I then tried to compare this with the most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of 19,95,81,000. 
• I then tried to compare this number with the population of India, which is  1,17,09,38,000. And then I came to know I was unique to the whole of India. Wow!!
• It didn't took long for me to compare this with the world population, which is 6,84,05,07,003. This came as a shock to me. 

I had initially thought I would compute the magic number, and then compare it with the world population to find out how many people are like me or same on this planet, but this came out as a shock to me, when I realised everyone of us is made unique. It was then I realised the beauty of nature, and the way things works. So many people, and not one is with a repeat. I feel amazed the way nature is made. About 6191 crore of people, all unique, a million species of flora and fauna, all unique. Such complex systems all over.

I actually feel like laughing at those who say that the world was created out of chance. Such complexity isn't possible out of chance. Whoever created all this, actually had put a lot of effort and time. This post has now actually given me a learning. I hadn't expected it to end this way, but I'm happy the way it has come. From a little interest to find out how many are like me, I ended up in learning an amazing lesson. I hope you too got a message, and you would now realise the uniqueness of yourself and start appreciating the nature around yourself. ☺

PS: Throughout the post, by saying 'astrology', I was referring to the Vedic Astrology (North Indian).  

PPS: This post, in no way comment on the existence 'astrology'.

Special Thanks: To my father, who helped me figure out how Kundli works.

Image Source: Wikipedia