Monday, April 30, 2001		Article

He has RAM for brain
By Peeyush Agnihotri

REPRODUCING numbers and words through photographic memory! No, we are not talking of any state-of-the-art computer device. Rather, a man, who is as much flesh and blood as we all are, is doing it. Only his brain is different.

Ask Rajiv Kaundal, a 24-year-old from Daroh, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, to memorise 200 random words and he parrots them off in three minutes flat. Not only that, he can recite the whole list in the reverse order too. Even to memorise a pack of playing cards and spooling them in any order in about four minutes is child’s play for him. He can memorise a random sequence of 50 digits in 25 seconds and can reel off all integers in the exact order flawlessly, both forward and backward.

Dubbed as "Male Shakuntla Devi," this boy from Dev Bhoomi has already found a place in the Limca Book of Records and is now all set to make his presence felt in the cyber-world through his portal, www.indiabrainpower.com, which was launched last week.

This man with incredible memory wants to be a journalist, though he is currently preparing for the Himachal Administrative Services competition.

Asked to comment upon his recent venture, he says the site will help students get the most out of their brainpower.

"I can list out as many as 10 cases wherein students either committed suicide or suffered from psychological disorder of some kind just because they could not cope with studies. Therefore, I created this site to help those who are busy preparing for competitive entrance tests and other school, college and university examinations," Rajiv says, sounding philanthropic.

"The pressure to perform better in the examinations is increasing each day as the competition becomes fiercer. More often than not, school-going children pay the price. Education planners are doing little to recast the syllabus. Parents also goad the kids on to perform better without bearing in mind that each child should be measured only against himself or herself and not against others, since achievement levels vary and can be vastly different even among siblings," he says.

Rajiv, whose father is a senior photographer with a Punjab-based vernacular daily, has also written a book on memory-developing techniques that has been recommended for all school libraries in the Himachal Pradesh government degree colleges and district libraries.

Asked whether he himself ever benefited in exams from his ability, he says that he discovered it rather accidentally after Class XII. "After completing my +2, I did a marine radio officer’s course. It was then that I realised that I could do this. During my graduation in psychology, I applied it on myself with good results. Now I want everyone to benefit from this as even otherwise we use just 10 per cent of our brain. The thrust should be on using the remaining 90 per cent as well. It was just the urge to help others that I devoted myself full-time to launch a Web site on memory improvement," the young man remarks and avers that recapitulating depends more on personal abilities rather than being natural.

Rajiv plans to sell the course on memory retention technique through his portal. "But remember, this is not a magic course that can make you efficient overnight. Expecting instant results would be too much. You have to apply the techniques spontaneously to improve your efficiency," he asserts.

Any special diet or exercise to keep his brain in shape? "Nothing special except that I eat a lot of Brahmi (Bacopa monnieri), a herb available in abundance in Himachal," he says.

His next ambition is to find a berth in the Guinness Book of World Records. To accomplish this feat he is working on recalling 400 sets of binary numbers in 17 minutes.

Entry in the Limca Book of Records, publishing a book on memory retention, launching a Web site, and now poised to bid for a slot in the Guinness — who says only computers can handle multi-tasking? This aspiring journalist from the hills can do as much, if not better.