Six Whiz Kids, One Mentor: Mission, Guinness Records!
Six wonder kids from the capital recently registered their names in the Hindustan Book of World Records for having amazing memory skills. From recalling words and objects to atomic numbers and countries, these kids displayed their outstanding talent to find their way into the Record Book. While the achievements of the kids, who are currently preparing for a feat in the Guinness Book of World Records, are praiseworthy, the role their mentor plays in their success is all the more significant. Interestingly, all the six students have been trained and mentored by one person, Dr. Atal Bihari Mallik.
My City Links recently caught up with both the mentor and his students in to find out about their journey together and their achievements.
Belonging to a non-descript village of Jajpur district, Dr. Atal Bihari Mallik completed his schooling and intermediate in his village. He later moved to Bhubaneswar for his higher studies where he completed his B Sc degree from Utkal University. He further pursued a Masters specialising in Psycho Neurotics under the Tamil Nadu University.
17 years since then, he has been into research and training in the field of Psycho Neurotics and has also written a book named ‘Master memory in golden chance’ which discusses the various tricks of increasing memory power of an individual. A humble genius, Atal Bihari also has to his credit an incredible invention. In 2007, he built a machine called ‘Neurotic Machine’ that can help detect people’s state of mind.
Telling us about the findings of his research through these years, he says, “I have been keenly interested in the development of brain power and memory power. It was also a part of our course and there I got to know that we can increase our brain power by certain tested methods and practice them up to a certain age.”
He informs, “Generally, as per our research, we have divided the brain into four states. The four types are Beta (reactive state of mind), Alpha (retentive state of mind), Theta (subconscious state of mind), and Delta (passive state of mind). Among these four conditions, the best condition for the brain is the Alpha state of mind. Most kid’s brains are usually in this state, making it easy to increase their brain power and memory.
Talking about the six kids, he says, “Although these six kids appear superior than the rest, they are like normal kids. But they are very hard working and determined. I only trained them how to practice and shared some methodology with them to help them memorise faster and exercise their brains to their best of abilities. The idea is to try and increase their will power to help them scale great heights in their interested areas. I have about 12 students and all of them are very talented. When they joined me, the only thing I had to do was identify their interest. Then I guided them as they wanted and also worked a lot to increase their self-confidence.”
So how does he go about selecting his students, we ask? “Well, except for a mentally challenged kid, all other children have the power to achieve such success in their life. All they need is proper guidance and attention by their parents and teachers. But the training should start early for better and effective results. After five years, a child’s brain gets prepared to learn and so any training for such a feat should start by that age,” he explains.
MCL also caught up with the genius kids and their skills left us amazed, literally! Jinsha Priyadarshni Mishra is a seventh standard student in Prabhuji English Medium School who can memorise any book in about 10 to 15 minutes! Talking about it, she says, “I have been working hard to improvise my memory skills. I still remember as a kid, I used to remember all the important lines of the newspaper and that’s how it had started for me. And, then one fine day, my father introduced me to Atal Bihari Mallik and he became my mentor. He guided me in the proper way and taught me tricks how to memorise things rapidly. He also gave us mental exercises to develop our brain power. To manage an entry into the World Record, I have really worked hard over the last few months. Armed with the tricks and exercises, I used to devote one hour every day for practice.”
The youngest of the lot is Om Sai Anurag, a Class IV student of Gurunanak Public School, who made his way into the Record Book for his multiple talents! He can not only memorise anything given to him, he can do multiplication with any number without doing any calculation for it and also recite tables up to 1000 as if chanting the Gayatri Mantra! Although very young, his concentration power is no less than an adult.
Krishna Diapayan and D. Varun Rao, both of them studying in Class V have been given the title of ‘Living Dictionary’ and not without reason! They both have memorised the entire Oxford Dictionary! Says Krishna, ‘I had never thought that I could make any sort of record due to my memory power but finding a mentor like Dr. Mallik, my self-confidence got a big boost. He taught me me how to memorise and calculate systematically, and his method helped me a lot to earn this record.”
So, while Varun and Krishna know the dictionary in and out, Sworup Sidharth Parida is the ‘Geography genius.’ He managed the record for remembering the locations of all the countries, their capitals, flags and currencies! A student of Class V, Sworup tells us how he used to religiously practice every day to achieve the feat! “I was a good student but I was not learning in a systematic process, but thanks to Mallik Sir, I learnt the methodology and with routine practice, I could manage to get my name registered in the Record Book.”
Sworup always had an inclination for Geography just the way Ayush Ashirvad Mohanty had for Chemistry. This 11-year-old boy has memorised all the Chemistry elements even as a Chemistry Professor tells us that it is not possible for a person to memorise more than 20 or 30 elements at a time! That’s not all. Ayush can remember words and objects in seconds!
