For a decade, Aravind P was a tourist guide in Italy. His pursuit to learn European languages introduced him to several memory-developing techniques. That may have got him the job of a foreign language teacher in the city, but the best reward came in the form of his most proud possession now - his Guinness World Record for memorising the longest binary sequence of 270 digits.
Aravind received his certificate from the Guinness authorities last week.
The 36-year-old can speak Italian, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. "I had to learn the languages as quickly as possible because it would help me guide more tourists. So, to improve my learning abilities, I had to develop my memory," said Aravind. After returning to India, Aravind started researching about records related to memory. "I then came across this record for memorising the longest binary digit sequence. The record was then held by Jayasimha Ravirala of Hyderabad, who memorised 264 digits in one minute in March 2011," he said.
Aravind registered with the Guinness World Records in March 2014. In October 2014, Guinness had set the criteria for Aravind's attempt to break Jayasimha's record. On April 3, 2015 Arvaind attempted the record and Guinness had appointed Dr D Srinivasan, psychiatrist from Kovai Medical Centre and Hospitals and R Prakasam, principal of PPG College of Technology as jury to witness it. The random binary sequence was generated by 123coimbatore.com. R Prakasam said, "Aravind was given one minute to observe the binary sequence, and was then asked to shut his eyes and recall the sequence. There was no time limit set for recalling the sequence," he said. It is a great achievement for an Indian."
Aravind began attempting to break the record at 10.30am in front of 270 people, and failed in four attempts. In his fifth attempt, Aravind broke the record by recalling six more digits than Jayasimha. His memory-enhancing technique is called 'Journey Method', where he replaces alphabets or numbers with objects.
Aravind wants to start a memory club and spread his memory-enhancing techniques to students and youth who will be appearing for board exams and competitive exams.
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