CHENNAI: Just a shade over ten years old, Sriram Balaji has more dates under his belt than the average teenager. This fifth-grader might not even be close to having a girlfriend, but he can give you the day of the week if you give him any date between now and 2030. “About a month ago I found him lying in bed with my mobile phone. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was looking at the calendar,” said his father Velusamy. Though he didn’t think much of it then, it all fit in when he realised that his son could give a date with precision within a second or two.A visit to the boy’s modest home in Velachery reveals his astonishing speed and accuracy. We had hardly finished saying ‘October 29, 2029’ before his confident answer almost completed our sentence, “Sunday, holiday.” As the date tests rolled on he kept dishing the answers out; the only delays were caused by our flipping through the mobile calendar to cross-check. Velusamy admitted that his son’s ability was rather surprising considering he was only a “medium to average” student at the Kendriya Vidyalaya school inside the IIT-M campus.“He hasn’t always had this extraordinary memory,” recalled Velusamy, who is a tiles salesman, “About 20 days back when I was speaking about the day his grandmother died, he told me I had the date wrong and went on to give me the correct date. But what really amazed me was when he recounted what we had done on the wrong date that I had given.”As a final test, we asked the boy, why not further than 2030? He grabbed his father’s phone and peered at the calendar for three odd minutes. “Ok, now ask,” he said simply but then gave us an ultimatum, “But this will be the last as I am tired. Seriya (Ok)?” We agreed and picked a date from 2033. He got that right too and earned his afternoon nap.
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