Honing the Talent of Memorizing
Priyanka Shukla, an IAS officer from Chhattisgarh, recently shared a video of a smart 2-year-old named Praneena, who is the daughter of Shukla’s colleague Pradeep Tandan. In the video, Praneena is asked to name the capital cities of a few dozen countries and does so correctly.
“At the age of just 2 years, she has memorized the names of the capitals of 205 countries,” Shukla tweeted. “Pradeep says that Praneena’s memory has been extraordinary from the very beginning.”
From the very beginning? Even as a baby, she apparently surprised everyone with her memory. Perhaps she remembered to scream in excitement every time Chhota Bheem appeared on TV.
As you can imagine, many Twitter users were impressed with Praneena’s memory. Calling her a “wonder kid,” a man named Vinit Parashar wrote: “Her talent needs to be honed properly. Kudos to the parents.”
While Parashar complimented Praneena’s parents, a few Twitter users were not so positive. “I never understood this fascination of parents to force a child of this age towards rote learning,” a man named Jitendra Sahu tweeted. “It would have been better if parents start inculcating logical thinking in their children specially of this age which will help them in future.”
His criticism would be valid if Praneena’s parents were actually forcing their daughter to memorize capital cities. But here’s how her father, Pradeep Tandan, responded to Sahu’s tweet: “These are her extra learnings with her interest in a playful way. She plucks best coriander leaves everyday morning from our kitchen garden. Take your time to meet her, you will be very much pleased by her logical thinking.”
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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