Riddhiraj Kumar
Riddhiraj Kumar
Today’s prodigy, tomorrow’s promise
- Nishanth
It was the November of 2013. The office of the Chief Minister of Gujarat was bustling with election work. The chief minister, Narendra Modi, who is also a hot contender for the post of prime minister in the upcoming Lok Saba elections, was extremely busy. In spite of it all, he made time to meet a special guest. A 6 year old named Riddhiraj Kumar.
What does a prime ministerial candidate have to do with a 6 year old boy? Well, Riddhiraj is a child prodigy, holding out a lot of promise for India’s future. He has blown the minds of many with his amazing memory. He was on several Indian TV channels this Children’s Day, giving interviews and demonstrating his prodigious talent of relating from memory the names of countries and their capitals, in addition to identifying 210 national flags. He can identify maps of Indian states simply by feeling their cut-outs blindfolded.
The little genius met Gujarat’s chief minister to accomplish a little dream: of presenting his design for a flag for Earth Day. Earth Day is an international event and its flag needs the approval of the UN. There are two other contenders (from other countries) whose ideas of flags are vying to represent this environmental cause. Riddhiraj is the only child in this contest.
When children of his age would struggle even to comprehend the concept of Earth Day, here is the prodigy designing a flag for it, capturing the essence of this idea in visual language.
Riddhiraj’s story begins when he was a year and half. His mom, Krupa Swayaraj, relates that as they were driving down the road in Kuwait in the midst of Egyptian football fans celebrating their country’s victory, Riddhiraj caught sight of the flags they were waving, and said with his newly-speaking mouth “Egypt.” Krupa was wonderstruck.
She says: “I was baffled, because he was just one and half years old, and he was just starting to talk and he could already identify a flag of a foreign country, which even many adults many not be able to do. He had actually seen the flag on TV and it had registered in his mind along with the name of the country. That’s when we realized that he has some special talent, and we started teaching him the flags of countries.”
Riddhiraj’s uptake was extremely good. He could pick things up in quick time. He was imbibing things in a photographic memory, and learnt the flags of all the countries in the world in less than one year. By the time he was two and half years, he could recognize the flags of 200 countries. Now he knows all the 210 countries. He tells them in under 3.30 minutes. Name any alphabet he will list you all countries starting with that alphabet. Name any continent he will list you countries in that continent. He excels in mathematics too.
Riddhiraj was honoured by Haryana ministers in Haryana. Riddhiraj has volume of information about space &planets so he is given sponsorship to go to NASA (USA) this year by H.B.KAPADIA SCHOOL AHMEDABAD.
On the Children’s Day of 2012, Riddhiraj Kumar, spoke to US astronaut Sunita Williams, who was aboard the International Space Station as commander of Expedition 33, through Ham Radio. The Science City in Gujarat,
India, in cooperation with NASA had organized the event on, giving 15 children, picked from all over India, the exclusive opportunity to talk to the astronaut.
Sunita Williams took one question from each of the participating children. The tele-talk session lasted for about 11 minutes, in which Riddhiraj asked, “What do you eat in space?”
Riddhiraj has staged several shows in India and a few in Kuwait, exhibiting his intellectual prowess and has never failed to amaze his audience. One of his admirers was the personal physician of India’s former President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, at whose behest Riddhiraj performed at a prestigious medical conference in India.
Science City picked Riddhiraj for the exclusive chat with Sunita Williams because of his interest in astronomy and his ambition to become an astronaut, which he had expressed in several interviews earlier.
Riddhiraj play with his little memory as under :-
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By blindfolded he can describe the colors, design and the contents of 204 countries flag.
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He can identify the 204 countries flag in 3 Minutes and 30 Seconds.
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By blindfold he can identify the 28 states of India by touching and feeling the shapes of states in 1 Minute 52 Seconds.
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He can take you around the world (204 countries) in 1 Minutes and 58 Seconds.
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He can identify all the countries on the outline MAP of the World (Without Names).
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You Name the continent, he can list the countries. -
Name any alphabet and he will list all the countries of that alphabet.
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Tell him any country; he can list you the neighbouring countries.
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He can make one flag from another.
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He can find out Cube Root in 30 seconds for numbers up to 11 million.
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He has around 200+ space information.
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He can tell capitals of all the countries.
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General Knowledge about World and India.
Some of Riddhiraj’s performances include:
---Bapi lahari
■ Bhavnagar in the presence of 5,000+ audiences
■ Ahmadabad 12,000+ audiences
■ Schools in Gujarat — India
■ Ahmedabad Cardiologist Doctors Association Meeting
■ Gujarat Old Age Ashrams
-----KUWAIT BAPS MANDAL
He did TV shows on India news and GSTV which you can see by logging in to www.riddhiraj.webs.com
Articles about him were published in leading Gujarat newspapers and e-papers including:
— Saurastra Samachar on 20th June 2012
— DivyaBhaskar on 20th June 2012
— AajKal on 23rd June 2012
— Saurastra Aasspaas on 23rdJune 2012
— Gujarat Samachar on 30th June 2012
----Gujarat Samachar on 20th nov2013
Riddhiraj loves to know more about Solar Systems, Planets and Space and his dream is to visit NASA-USA and to become an Astronaut.
Riddhiraj was born in India (Gujarat-Bhavnagar) on 3rd April 2007 and he is a student of Bhavan’s, Kuwait. His father Swayaraj Kumar is an IT professional, and his mother Krupa is his coach. He would like to express his thanks to Mr. P.C.Rathod (bhavnagar) and Mr Sajad (Kuwait) for motivating him.
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