Shakuntala Devi: Meeting the temperamental math genius

First Post :by Kamala Thiagarajan :Apr 22, 2013

It was the summer of 1998 and I was beginning my career by freelancing for Madras Plus, a popular city supplement for The Times of India. That afternoon, the editor of the features page handed me an assignment.

I was to interview Shakuntala Devi, the mathematical genius that journalists were so fond of referring to as the ‘human computer’. I’d always admired her and followed her progress, so the prospect of meeting her in person excited me. She had booked herself into a suite at the Taj Connemara and was meeting journalists from her hotel room.

Shakuntala Devi. Agencies.

The local papers hailed her as not just a mathematical genius but also a world famous astrologer. There were claims that astrology was of course a matter of numbers and that she could read the numbers in your chart that foretold your future with precision, just as as she could compute complex fifty digit problems with ease.

After calling her secretary to confirm the interview, in a couple of hours, I found myself seated across from the woman whose intelligence the world was raving about. It’s been fifteen years, but there are details of that interview that play themselves out in technicolor in my mind. There were plenty of people milling about— journalists, members of her staff, people who had come for an astrological reading, armed with their date and time of birth, which was all she’d needed to make a ‘prediction’.

She was wearing a black cotton saree, bright red lipstick and a perpetual frown on her face. And there was no getting around the fact that she was irritable and short tempered. She snapped at the attendant who brought her a glass of water, was rude to a photographer, raised her voice when someone reminded her that people had queued up to have their charts read.

Shakuntala Devi
Born	November 4, 1929 Bangalore, India
Died	April 21, 2013 (aged 83) Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Cause of death	Heart attack
Nationality	Indian
Other names	Human computer
Occupation	Mathematician, Astrologer

‘Can’t you see I’m BUSY? Let them wait!’ she roared. And five minutes into our interview, she interrupted me abruptly mid-sentence, rapping her knuckles sharply on the gleaming polished wood of the oval table between us. “Your paper MUST publish my interview on the front page. They MUST. Tell your editor, tell her NOW.”

Taken aback though I was, I knew that if we were to progress any further, I had to soothe ruffled feathers and quickly. I reassured her that we would give her top billing and that she deserved it.

 

Then when she’d calmed down, she resumed answering my questions as though nothing was amiss. Two things struck me: her passion for mathematics (there was no mistaking that) and her curious honesty. She had no qualms in admitting that she had an unusual childhood. Her father was a circus artist, often a performing magician who was well-versed with card tricks; she was the daughter of his third wife. He would take her on road shows and people would marvel at her ability to solve complex sums and guess the card that they’d picked up from the pack. In reality, she had memorized the arrangement of the entire deck. Her memory, just as her mathematical ability, was photographic and phenomenal.

When she spoke of mathematics, her eyes lit up. She told me that mathematics was everywhere, in every symmetric petal, in the stalks of wild flowers, even in the rhythmic chirping of birds. “We’re surrounded by mathematics and yet we fail to recognize it,” she rued. “It’s all a kind of conditioning.”

She said that her future dreams involved setting up an institute for poor children to realize their potential and that she hadn’t decided the venue yet. Her books had always focused on getting the younger generation interested in maths. She steadfastly refused to answer any questions on her astrological ability.

The next day, my aunt decided that she wanted her future told. She set up an appointment to see Ms Devi. When I asked how the reading went, I realized that it was all about mathematics too. Five hundred rupees in ten minutes!

The ‘human computer’, ‘mental calculator’, math whiz Shakuntala Devi passed away here early on Sunday aged 80.

Takeover tycoon R P Goenka dies at 83

BS Reporters  |  Kolkata  April 15, 2013 Last Updated at 00:54 IST

RP Goenka established RPG Enterprises in 1979, which included Phillips Carbon Black, Asian Cables and Murphy India

Rama Prasad Goenka, one of the country’s earliest takeover tycoons, died here today, leaving behind a Rs 31,000-crore empire. He was 83.

He was unwell for a while. The cremation was held at the Keoratala ghat. The baithak will be today.

After graduating in history from the elite Presidency College, Goenka attended an advanced management programme at Harvard.

He joined Duncan Brothers, then a managing agency, in 1951 on Rs 350 a month. Later, in a coup of sorts, Keshav Prasad Goenka, Rama Prasad’s father, took control of Duncan Brothers. The appetite for acquisition was possibly passed on from father to son. After the family settlement — that entailed dividing Keshav Prasad’s empire among three sons, Rama Prasad embarked on a buying spree, and the title of takeover tycoon stuck to him for life.

RPG Enterprises was formed in 1979, with an annual turnover of Rs 105 crore. In 1981, Ceat was acquired. There was no looking back since then. At the insistence of Sanjiv Goenka, CESC was bought. The other acquisitions include KEC, HMV, Spencer and Harrisons Malayalam.

Dunlop was a separate story. Goenka acquired a minority stake in the company, along with Manu Chhabria. Differences with Chhabria led Goenka to sell his stake, though only after turning it around.

Among the aborted attempts were Premier Automobiles Ltd (PAL) and Haldia Petrochemicals. The attempt to acquire PAL was apparently put off on a request from Indira Gandhi.

His proximity to Gandhi was well known, as was the fact that his loyalties were with the Congress. He was elected as Rajya Sabha member in 2000.

It could be foresight or personal experience but Goenka drew up the blueprint for one of the most amicable settlements in India Inc, that formalised a division of assets between his sons about three years ago.

The settlement was the genesis of a new entity for the Sanjiv Goenka-controlled companies, the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. The Harsh Goenka companies are under the aegis of RPG Enterprises, though both sons have the right to use the RPG name.

People in the know say Goenka had learnt early in life that this was the best way to nip in the bud any possible settlement disputes.

Keshav Prasad had divided his empire — spread across tea, automobiles, tyre, jute, cotton textile and electric cables — among three sons in his lifetime.

Gita Piramal’s book, Business Maharajas, says according to the settlement drawn up by Keshav Prasad, brothers Jagdish, Gouri and Rama started out with a clutch of companies with roughly the same turnover. Each group contained a carbon black company but varied in profitability and potential. It was decided that inheritance should be such that there was least disturbance to the management of the companies.

A look at the split between the Sanjiv Goenka group of companies and Harsh Goenka shows the underlying theme was common in the method for separation: A near-equal share of sales turnover between the segregated group of companies and least disruption to management, as the brothers have bagged the companies that they managed.

Rama Prasad Goenka will always be known for his business mettle. But he once told a close aide that his greatest achievement was the temples that he built, including the Mahalaxmi temple in Kolkata. He was especially happy that he had not built a “Goenka Temple”.

A death in the family -Death of Priya 's Father

Children flounder when they lose a parent. Photo: Natasha Badhwar.
Live Mint :Natasha Badhwar : Sat, Mar 30 2013. 12 10 AM IST

The impact of losing a parent on a young child is immense

The first time a child lost a parent in my class, we were in class V. 

I was new in that school. Priya was my best friend even though we had only known each other for three months.

 I had attended her birthday party in Geetanjali Enclave in south Delhi.

 Her father died of kidney failure. He had had a transplant earlier.

I remember feeling numb. I didn’t understand what she had lost. I was just quiet. 

My mother was distraught. She spoke about their family for a long time. 

She would repeat how young the father had been.

 I remembered a man with a dark beard. 

A 10-year-old child thinks all adults are old.

Many years later, we were film students, hanging around an inner courtyard on our campus. A classmate had had to leave suddenly after she received a phone call informing her that her mother had died in another city. 

I remember going into a shell again.

An argument broke out somewhere near me. Our class argued about everything. Two classmates seemed to be disagreeing vociferously over the impact of losing a parent. They were loud and angry. Hours later, we realized that both of them had lost a parent in their teenage years. They had been deeply shaken that day. You have no idea how it really feels, they were both saying. Screaming from the raw isolation of their experiences.

I had walked away that day. 

Both of them became my best friends later.

Our children bring home stories from their classrooms. There was a new boy in the first grade with our daughter. First she reported how he didn’t understand English. He didn’t wash his hands after going to the bathroom, she said. He drank water from other children’s bottles.

We spoke to our daughter. Children come from different kinds of families. They learn different kinds of behaviour at home. Some children take longer to learn the ways of a new school. Don’t laugh at him. He needs friends too.

She began to tell us lighter stories. 

He was still being inappropriate, but they had begun to laugh with him, rather than at him. I met him after school one day and spoke to him. He looked away, his mouth slightly open. He is tall and stout but his face is still like the baby he was a few years ago.

Later, my daughter explained him to me. “He only talks to people he knows. He listens to our class teacher, but he is shy. He will talk to me but he won’t talk to you,” she said protectively.

One of our friends called us on a weekend after years of being lost to us. “Tell him to come home,” I said to my husband. “He needs a family. I can use a son.”

Rohit is a successful design entrepreneur. He is also a single child, a single adult and one who lost both his parents in his early 20s. He came over and stayed with us for the weekend. The first night he stayed up late, dusting and sorting everything in our house. We found toys and books arranged according to themes. “I am always trying to build a home,” he said.

Life. 

Our stories keep converging. 

They intersect. 

They cross each other. 

Sometimes it takes years before we realize what it is that draws us to another.

 Despite our successful, sorted out external selves, something in us connects to the backstory of the other. 

These stories may take years to unravel, yet we subconsciously recognize something in the other.

The boy in my daughter’s class.

 He would ask her every day how long it was before it would be lunchtime.

 He had difficulty in reading and writing. Girls were complaining that he irritated them.

We spoke to the class teacher about him. “His mother died of leukaemia last month,” she told us. “She had been in hospital for a long time.” The teacher was now making him sit next to her throughout the day. She knew he had special needs. She knew his needs.

Rohit came over one weekend and painted one of the walls on our terrace, splashing it with colours. He shot a photo feature with our children fooling around in front of it. My mother-in-law made him sit next to her and asked him about everyone in his extended family. She is a single child too.

The child in our daughter’s class is changing his school. He needs a special educator, the teacher told me. Since I am a grown-up now, I don’t feel numb any more. I feel that there has got to be something I can do.

“Should I do something,” I say aloud at home.

“Yes, Mamma, yes,” my children answer in chorus.

At the parent-teacher’s meeting last weekend, the teacher pointed out the boy’s father to me. I turned to see a young man taking his place in the classroom with a half-smile on his face. Spectacles.

 A pleasant, comfortable expression that made me feel relaxed and hopeful.

He had come alone. I told him that my daughter is his son’s friend. “He’s a wonderful child,” I said. “We wish him luck.”

I don’t know why I felt I had to write these stories here.

 I just wanted to.

Natasha Badhwar is a film-maker, media trainer and mother of three.