Brain Power

What got researchers interested in Noronha’s brain activity is that the 25-year-old is the teacher who trained Thakkar to be able to achieve his feat.

Andheri-resident Noronha,a child prodigy herself,has been for the past six years honing young brains to increase their activity,enlarge their memory and contain the boisterous minds of children,enabling them to concentrate better. She has trained several children,many of whom have participated in world cup tournaments that involve mental calculation,and won. Some like Thakkar have broken secured a place in the Guinness Book of World Records,Alternate Book of World Records and Memoriad Book of World Records.

Thakkar also holds a record in mental multiplication involving two 20 digit numbers in 4.44 minutes. Eight-year-old Shourya Maheshwari,another student of ‘Gwen Ma’am’ or ‘Gwen Didi’ as the children fondly call her,can perform the incredible task of solving a 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube blindfolded within a few minutes,without any memorisation time.

Rhea Shah has created a record in the extraction of eight-digit square roots mentally of 10 numbers.

Noronha says,“You don’t need to be born brilliant. Any normal mind can be trained for this. Also,this is something that one can do at any age. However,adults find it difficult to give time to this kind of training in their busy lives. The minds of children are more agile.”

Where Noronha had initially started with seven children,she now has 216 centres across the country with a student bank of over 1 lakh under the brand name of Child’s Intellectual Academy. She has handpicked trainers for various centres,of which two are in Kandivali,three in Navi Mumbai and one each in Andheri and Colaba. The trainers conduct many activities for children. If a child is particularly bright,Noronha selects him or her to be trained personally,free of cost,and honed for participating in world championships.

At 19,Noronha decided to try her skills at training children to perform mental calculation. The extensive training involves activities from what she likes to call the ‘brain gym’. She makes them play memory games and perform mental exercises to increase their concentration. At her training centre,Noronha also has a room where she asks the children to go for an hour and just sit or sleep and listen to the right kind of music,the kind of sounds that can charge the brain.

The training also involves mathematical exercises,algorithms and so on. “It might be difficult to believe but I hated Maths in school,” says Noronha.

“Initially,I took a lot of time to train the children as I was not sure if I was on the right path. Now that we have broken records,I feel more confident. Record trainings are intense. Children spend more than 13 hours a day practising,” she said.

Noronha also keeps an eye on her students to observe their social side,their emotions. Throughout the training,she keeps in touch with school principals to ensure that they are not lagging behind in their regular studies or extra-curricular activities. She also has counsellors as often,the trained geniuses become an object of jealousy in school,which could affect their fragile minds.

“The counsellors tell them that if they start losing humility,then they are going to lose all this. The children look at me as a friend,” Noronha said.

Thakkar,who had started training at the age of nine,is now busy practising after school. “I go to school,then I go for karate. I spend most of the time practising. I want to break my own record. The last time,I had extracted square roots in 67 seconds. Now I am aiming for under 60 seconds,” Thakkar said.

manasi.phadke@expressindia.com