A calendar that does away with 'Friday the 13th'!

New Delhi, Nov 12: The irrational fear of Friday the 13th is termed Friggatriskaidekaphobic and it combines a fear of Fridays with the perception that number 13 is a unlucky number.

Now an ex Indian Air Force officer has developed a calendar that does away with 'Friday the 13th'! "In my concept 13th is never a Friday because my calendar starts on a Monday. What I am trying to do is to introduce the date from solstice day which falls on a Friday, so on the new calendar the next day could be a Monday.

"Otherwise in the usual calendar it is continuing so two and a half days get adjusted automatically. In my calculations I have said that another two and a half days need to be deleted. This format started on Monday will never have 13th as a Friday on the calendar," says Brij Bhushan Vij who claims his work has also got an entry into the Limca Book of Records in 1994.

Vij also asserts that his calendar will help all those born on the leap day of February 29 to cut a cake every year. "I say keep the current Gregorian calendar without any changes. What I have done is, I have removed July 31 from the calendar and introduced it in the month of February as February 29. As far as divided by four is concerned for a leap year, it now gets shifted to a leap day between June 30 and July 1. People who had never enjoyed their birthday on February 29 will enjoy it now," says Vij.

The former air force officer, who has now moved to the United States, has introduced a new concept of calculation for the formation of calendar which he calls as "decimalisation of minutes and hours."

"I keep the 24 hour day, I don't disturb it. I keep the seven days a week format, I don't disturb it. I also keep the year as such. The modification here is that the hour remains the same; the minutes get converted into hundred decimalised minutes and hundred decimalised seconds. So over all the hours remain the same, you just make more use of the values by decimalising minutes and seconds," says Vij.

PTI

ANS