Of all the cultural imports from the West, nothing’s more deadening to contemplate than our obsession with the number thirteen. As if we didn’t need to deal with the staggering weight of our own oafish superstitions.

If 13 is bad, what then to make of Friday the 13th? This year, we’ve already encountered it once in February. Then there’s this Friday, 13th March, and once more in November. Three times in a year in which to trot out every ghastly, ghoulish cliche you can find.

As a child I saw a horror film called Saturday the 14th, with the tagline, “just when you thought it was safe to look at the calendar again”. Not being of the age to recognise the concept of a spoof, I took this comedic movie quite seriously. And since it wasn’t the scariest movie ever, I came to the conclusion that horror films suit me. Bad mistake. It took me years to get over The Exorcist (movie) and The Shining (book).

Since then I have always looked upon the Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th not with horror, but with embarrassment.

Of course, famous eccentrics and their superstitions always make for interesting reading. But even here, Friday the 13th has proved to be a let down. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly never travelled on the 13th day of the month. And as I once heard on Stumped! the BBC cricketing podcast, that England wicket keeper Jack Russell would skip every 13th step on a staircase.

There’s not much you can squeeze out of those facts, is there?

Thinking along these lines, I made a discovery, a hypothesis if you like, that surely ought to get me entry into a PhD course somewhere. It goes like this: we just like to talk about Friday the 13th, we aren’t really terrified by it. Not in India, and not even in the West.

If anything, future generations will celebrate the day. Hallmark might devote a range of cards to the theme like some ecards has done, and someday Friday the 13th might even become a festival.

Now that would be truly terrifying.