Meet Shakuntala Devi 2.0
Hyderabad-based Bhanu Prakash makes India proud by winning gold at the Mind Sports Olympiad 2020
Neelakantha Prakash, a 20-year-old ‘human calculator’, is setting his stage in the field of mathematics. In 2011 and 2012, he was named the SIP National Speed Arithmetic Prodigy while in the year 2013 he won the International Speed Arithmetic Prodigy Competition in Singapore. Then, in he won the Mental Calculation World Cup in Germany in the 2014 and 2016.
This year, Bhanu won the gold at the Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) 2020, making India proud at yet another international competition.
By now, the Hyderabad-based young mathematician has also worked in different fields — as an academic researcher in mathematics and a performer who has given multiple stage shows across the country and the world — is a TEDx speaker and has held a world record.
Now the youngster has made it his life’s mission to create awareness about mental maths and trying to encourage it into becoming a sport. In this interaction, Bhanu tells us how he hopes to use his ideas to make mathematics a creative learning process.
ADDING UP INTERESTS
Talking about how he gained interest in mathematics, Bhanu tells us how he was a regular school-going child. “In 2005, when I was only five years old, I met with an accident, which left me bed-ridden for a year. That was a turning point in my life, when I started involving myself in solving puzzles and got connected to maths at a very young age. Numbers were something that was intrigued about,” Bhanu tells us.
Yet, others would struggle to understand his passion for the subject. “This was not a wellestablished field as compared to chess, and I had people talking negatively about what I was doing,” explains Bhanu. “For me, however, mathematics was an art form, which gave me the ability to think differently.”
By 2014, Bhanu’s mathematical abilities brought him the world championship after which he started achieving records and then, breaking them!
“By 2015, I had broken fifty world records,” says an exuberant
Bhanu. “But for now, I am just thrilled to have won the gold medal for our country at Mind Sports Olympiad 2020.”
INSPIRED CURIOSITIES
The mind champion, who’d be graduating this year in mathematics from St Stephen’s College, New Delhi, hopes to contribute to society by teaching the creative art of maths. Towards this, in the year 2018, Bhanu had set up an institute called “Exploring Infinity”, in which he started creative learning for maths. Calling the human calculator, the late Shakuntala Devi, his main inspiration, whom he also considers a good mentor, Bhanu also lists Srinivasa Ramanujam another of his inspirations, whom he claims to love puritanically given how unprecedented his work is.
Apart from being a mathematician, the maths-lover — who also does a lot of shows in which he happily (and correctly) calculates numbers scrolling on the screen — is interested in cricket and football. In fact, in addition to the mathematics wizards stated above, another person he considers a huge inspiration despite being from a completely different field is Sachin Tendulkar.
TAKING MATHEMATICS AHEAD
The only mathematician from his family, Bhanu is secure in the knowledge that his parents’ and family members support his hopes to create a new era for mathematics. To this end, Bhanu hopes that there are changes in the current system of teaching mathematics in India today.
“All around the world, people are exposed to certain types of mathematics since they get into school, and they are usually taught the subject like a ‘download’. However, the higher concepts of mathematics are way more interactive than everything we learn in our school system. Moreover, maths cannot be ‘factory’ taught — it has to be more than that,” explains Bhanu.
Then he points out his suggestions about how the system of teaching mathematics could be revised in three steps:
(i) The objective of learning maths should be revised;
(ii) Teachers and trainer must actively work at eradicating the phobia around maths; and
(iii) Emphasis must be laid on creating a mathematical literate society.
This was not a wellestablished field as compared to chess, and I had people talking negatively about what I was doing. For me, however, mathematics was an art form, which gave me the ability to think differently — Bhanu
AN ENDEAVOUR FOR LIFE
In his endeavour, he even comes across people who question why he pays so much attention to the subject and about taking it ahead, given that technology has provided every convenience of calculating, beginning from calculators. “On the similar vein then, despite all the vehicles in the world to move around, why do we still need to use our legs?” he asks with a smile. “Similarly, even though we have calculators we need exercise for our brains and that is the reason I have given my life for maths.”