Coimbatore :

Amidst the many camera flashes, clicking noises and constant whispers from on-lookers, city-based language teacher, P Aravind, was trying his best to recall the 270 binary numbers being flashed before him from a computer. He finally managed to recall all the 270 digits shown to him in the fifth attempt in a bid to enter the Guinness Book of World Records at the Kasthuri Sreenivasan Trust on Friday morning.

Aravind, 36, who teaches Italian, Spanish and French and has a passion for languages, had been dabbling in memory techniques for more than 15 years to help make learning of languages easier. “Every time I learnt a new language there was always a long list of words, verbs, vowels, nouns, phrases and sentences to learn,” said Aravind. “I initially found it tough and monotonous. I noticed that my students began losing interest when the going got tough,” he said.

That was when Aravind began researching memory techniques which he used to test his memory power from time to time.

I began training a year ago with just 40 numbers, and slowly kept increasing it by 20 every two months,” he said. “The earlier record was set in 2011 by a Mr Jayasimha with 264 digits. I decided to use the memory palace technique developed by Greek Poet Simonedes in 2500 BC which involves imagining a palace where you place numbers in various corners, place the rest in any way, leave the palace and continue your journey. When you return and start looking at the palace you start finding the numbers as you walk through it,” he said. He practiced at least three hours a day.

He managed to memorize 270 numbers in a minute and repeat it within eight minutes, practicing in front of many locations. “I did it in a crowded bus stop, Brookefields Mall and at the location on Thursday evening to get used to distractions,” he said.

While he looked nervous during the first attempt on Thursday evening, he looked more confident during the second attempt and was close to reaching the target before failing at the 240th digit. After a five minute break, he began all over again and succeeded in his fifth attempt.

Aravind dedicated the achievement to all his students. “I want this to be an example to all students who think they can’t memorize anything. They just need to zero in on the right technique,” he said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Coimbatore / TNN / April 04th, 2015