In another lifetime, I used to work in downtown Dayton at a chain of smoke shops. That’s what they were called, a carryover from older days. But we were really a glorified snack shop that sold many sundries. My aunt and uncle owned the stores, and they did quite well. I think there were five in all, and I worked mainly at the Talbot Towers on First and Ludlow. In later years, they opened a greeting card store, and I ran that location.
Anyway. We’d get quite busy during several periods throughout the day. Breakfast and lunch were two crunch times, and I’m telling you, the people would pack into that store. When I first started, we had the old type of cash registers — the kind where you had to really punch in the keys. So a lot of the time — to save time — my cousin and I would work with the drawer open in order to move people through the line quickly.
What I’m getting to is this. I was a wizard at making change. It was as if I had memorized all 100 slots in the subtraction from a dollar. If their total was 67 cents, I immediately, lightning fast, knew their change was 33. And on and on. This was true for any dollar amount and from any bill given. If the total was 1.14 from 20.00, in a flash, I knew the change was 18.86. The sum of 4.79 from 10.00, and zippity, 5.21 back. You get the idea.
So when I heard of Shakuntala Devi, I was reminded of myself in those days. Slightly. I’m not sure how I happened on the likes of Shakuntala Devi, but she was a writer and mathematician from India.
Devi was popularly known as the “Human Calculator” because of her ability to make mental calculations. It started at an extremely young age for her. Her father was a magician and performer and discovered his daughter’s talent. It happened while he was teaching her a card trick about the time she was three years old.
She must have been magnificent in whatever she did because her father left his own career behind and began touring with her. And during this tour, he showed off her immense capacity for mental calculation. They eventually moved to London, and Devi performed her mind works all across Europe and America.
She’s in the Guinness World Record Book because of her multiplication skills. She correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers, chosen at random, in 28 seconds. That’s two 13-digit numbers. Like 5,894,506,836,347 times 8,453,201,284,448. Gadzooks, I say. Gadzooks!
I’m not sure what else Devi did in all of her life. She was born on November 4, 1929, in Bangalore, Mysore, British India. And she died some 83 years later from heart and kidney problems.
In between, she did many other things, like writing a book on homosexuality, of all things.
In 1977, her book, The World of Homosexuals, was the first published academic study of homosexuality in India. Apparently, she got some criticism. She was in a documentary called “For Straights Only,” and she said that her interest in the topic was because of her marriage to a homosexual man. She wanted to look at homosexuality more closely and try to understand it.
Mostly, though, she was making a call for decriminalization of homosexuality and “full and complete acceptance—not tolerance and sympathy.”
Eventually, she and her gay husband divorced, and I must say, I’m not surprised.
In addition to her work as a mental calculator, Devi was a notable astrologer. She wrote several books, too, including cookbooks and novels.
Devi was honored with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 84th birthday.
So there she is. Wonder-brained Shakuntala Devi. With a name like Shakuntala, I wonder what her friends called her. Probably, amazing.
======
“When you’re true to who you are, amazing things happen.”
— Deborah Norville
======
“Nothing amazes me anymore.”
— David Beckham
**I feel sorry for Beckman in this case. Somebody take me out and shoot me when nothing amazes me anymore. Because right now, a whole lot of things amaze me.**
======
“E=mc2”
― Albert Einstein, The Theory of Relativity and Other Essays
========
The Human Calculator. Huge and small.
