We regularly get news tips about freakishly smart desi kids, like six year old Pranav Veera:
Pranav Veera can recite the names of the U.S. presidents in the order they served in office. He can say the alphabet backward. Give him a date back to 2000, and he’ll tell you the day of the week. He’s only 6 years old… Pranav has an IQ of 176… Albert Einstein’s IQ was believed to be about 160. The average IQ is 100. [link]
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p>Yawn. Another desi Doogie in diapers. I mean, the kid is cute:
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But he’s not really that smart: 
What does Pranav want to be when he grows up? “An astronaut,” he said without hesitation. [link]
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p>Besides which, I know the secret of our racial success. No, it’s not secret pooja, genetic superiority or even sheer numbers (if one person in a million has an IQ of 176 or above, and there are over a million desis in America … ), it’s parents:
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I sent this to my group of brown friends – this response from one made me laugh hard:
“He’s not going to be an astronaut, he’s going to be an engineer in Schaumburg(IL) or the suburbs of Cleveland. Or he’s going to completely lose his mind in college, grow his hair out in dreads and follow Phish revival tours around in a VW van. Give up now kid and spare yourself the pain.”
It would be a good idea to look down on people from the space. Isn’t that what an intelligent supposed to do?
Most species in the earth spends their intelligence in finding a mate to reproduce. Indian parents do that for their kids. So they have all the time in the world to write JEE.
Why did they ask him what 7 X 11 is?(7-11) They had to go there with a 6 year old kid.
Dude, didnt you feel even the slightest tinge of embarrassment when you wrote that? Do the nations of the indian subcontinent look like success stories to you? Is India Shining? Really?
What’s up with Pranav’s accent and pronunciation? I think he needs to watch more Reading Rainbow to learn what a Cleveland accent sounds like.
5 · Dhoni said
I agree. Strong dumbass statement. Epic fail.
zeewhyexdoubleyouveeyouteeessarequeuepeeohennemellkayjayeyeachegeeeffeeeeedeeceebeeaaaaa……
Washingtonadamsjeffersonmadisonmonroeadamsjacksonvanburenharrisontylerpolktaylorfilmorepiercebuchananlincoln…
My parents taught me to memorize cool things by rote when I was in kindergarten, too. ^__^
If you read the link you’ll notice that his parents want him to be “as normal as possible”. Thats good that they don’t plan on being ridiculously overbearing; just focused on giving him a well rounded childhood. But seriously, he’s so cute!
Come on, you shouldn’t condescend to Pranav but to the bozo who put the movie together. That person clearly has no idea of what a IQ of 176 is capable of if they think this is an impressive display of it. I wonder if Pranav rolled his eyes before they started shooting the footage.
Of course not. And it never was, isn’t it? Which is why half the European nations were falling over each other to find a simpler sea route to that subcontinent back in the day!
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/percent-world-gdp-1500.jpg
I understand the day thing being amazing, but why is multiplication amazing? I could multiply at six, and I certainly am no genius. Very dumb video. Lol.
On another note, I love GGM! 😀
Are Desi parents following Obama’s advice to the extreme and pushing too much pressure ?
Obama said while interacting with local residents at California’s Costa Mesa town hall :
13 · Priya said
Naa, Obama probably got that advice from us. On the inside, he has a WannaBeDesi. Who doesn’t? (Other than desis, of course.)
I thought it was a nice setup to the punchline . Lightenen up. If you have difficulty click on the clip 🙂 (although the GGM meme has been done to death on SM)
The good thing is he’s in USA. Back home, he’d be a one track record. Here, he could be a in physics, math, or (PLEASE YES) fine arts. BTdubs, that goodness gracious me clip is one of the best ones ever (my favorite, even though its cheesy is bhangarman)
To Pranav:
Pranav, brother, I was just as gifted as you when I was a kid. I was winning spelling bees at my county level, I knew the atomic weights of the first 20 or so atoms on the periodic table by the time I was 10; I knew algebra at 10 as well (even the quadratic formula). Where did this get me? It didn’t get me laid, put it that way. It took me many years to find out that girls weren’t impressed with my Chess Championship. What do I do now? I’ve got a dead-beat job, and I post regularly onto Sepia Mutiny. But at least I get laid.
So kid, please enjoy your childhood, and don’t be molded by your family. Play sports, don’t be afraid of failure, do extra-curricular activities besides chess and Math Club, and associate with many different peoples. Yes, you will eventually get a hot-shot job, but you need to not allow your parents to tell you what to do and how to think all the friggin’ time.
Mahesh, Dude! The child is six years old. It is wholly appropriate for parents to take an active role in molding their children at that age. Don’t be getting on their cases until he starts hitting his tweens.
“Of course not. And it never was, isn’t it? Which is why half the European nations were falling over each other to find a simpler sea route to that subcontinent back in the day!”
In the beginning, they were mostly looking for nutmeg, not to mention allspice, cinnamon, ginger and cardamon. What would ye olde Christmas aromas be without India? An entire far flung econ-empire was built on spicing up a cuisine even the native English found a bit bland.
“I mean, the kid is cute”
…and, 15 years from now, he will be able to recent the precise time, location, situation of the 5000 times he would’ve heard the words said to him “You’re so cute, a sweetheart, you’d make such a good friend..” by Indian women across the globe.
“It took me many years to find out that girls weren’t impressed with my Chess Championship. “
They’re Not??? &GASP&!
21 · oblivion said
No. They’re not impressed with my abilities at chess. I wish that I invested more time beat-boxing or playing drums or even salsa dancing. Girls love that crap.
18 · Yoga Fire said
You’re right. I didn’t mean it the way I said it. I meant that he should TOTALLY listen to his parents. After all, they love him, and he’s only 6. But when he’s older, his parents should allow him to be curious about non-science fields and pursue other non-academic interests.
There was this one 3 year old kid on youtube, also Indian from India, I think. He knew all 50 state capitals in the USA. But you could tell that the boy’s parents are making him memorize useless stuff just to impress folks. It was cringe-worthy.
I don’t know why, but I want to smack that kid in the face with a fish.
For crying out loud, people, are you too dense too realize that children (and their parents) know how to use Google?! Goofing off for a local news spot (I’d wager the family is probably friends of friends of friends of some desperate producer trying to find something charming in these glum times) does not open a family–and a six-year-old to public ridicule!! At least, not in polite or civilized company. Before you say anything negative or mean or predictive about a six-year old who will inevitably find this post one day, please consider at least having the courage to use your own name.
Pranav, you are adorable and I admire your willingness to be a good sport for the camera. Best of luck with whatever you decided to do with that lovely brain of yours.
And the GGM is deeply hilarious. One of these days I’m going to get the DVD.
Gobi is brain food? in my home it was okra and almonds–take that rocky balboa power shake…
i ate some pakistani brain curry once..tasted like eggs
was it made by hannibal lakhani.
“….he will be able to recent the precise time, location,….”
should be
“he will be able to RECITE the precise time, location,”
17 · boston_mahesh said
Well, my date won an integration bee, and sure enough, he is superb with the area below my curves.
Re 12:
Actually, the day thing is also fairly simple if you memorize certain tables and rules.
16 · ROMEO 86 said
While I absolutely agree on that, but then again he may have become a wall-st quant by now instead of going for research or art, if he was born in US some 25 years back .
31 · zee said
Paradoxically, the meltdown has actually increased the demand for quants on Wall Street. I hope this is highly temporary. As the stimulus kicks in, however, I expect more physicists and engineers would go into (or stay in) careers in such useful things as green energy (solar, nuclear) or biotechnology (food, health) instead of ‘finance’. And I hope to God the finance sector contracts relative to the rest of the economy in employment and output, ending the colosssal distortion it currently constitutes.
‘Everything I needed to know about finance I learnt in the third grade – compound interest.’
Pranav’s parents need tohang out with their son, Pranav, a little bit less. This is embarrassing. I’d rather have a son who’s more like Sanjaya than this kid. They’re both good kids, but I can clearly tell that Sanjaya’s parents are more chill and obtrusive. Oh…and Sanjaya knows how to use an Almanac to discern when Martin Van Bueren’s b’day is. And Pranav can’t hit a falsetto tenor note.
The video clip was hilarious!!! It reminded me of my mom growing up….I would get an A- and she would say why not an A?? =P Gotta love mom for that…always pushing for perfection..
But how about this?
This, ie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELqoPdryti8
He’s cuteee hehe. Hey if I had a kid with an IQ of 176 at age six I’d be flashing him to the world too. This is far more harmless, entertaining and adorable than the sexy Bollywood dancing and parroting of sexualized lyrics of filmy songs I see from the average 6 year old in the desi community. Nothing is more irritating and disturbing than that.
17 · boston_mahesh said
Geez, dont hate yourself that much. Forget girls, Even the guys here are starting to slowly back away. I like cars/motorcycles, how many girls like that? I didnt buy myself a prius and prance in SF.
LOL. Pranav’s cute, and he can rattle some stuff out. Hope he gets to do and become whatever he wants!
The GGM video’s just plain hilarious! Thank you for the laughs! 🙂
That counting the alphabet backward will come very handy when a cop pulls him over for drunk driving
Pranav Veera was on the Today Show, and his interview with Ann Curry maybe found on msnbc.com. The kid is slightly bright – not that bright, but slightly slow. I don’t think that an idiot savant is a genius, which is sort of what he is with his day/date recollections. When asked why he wanted to be an astronaut, his reply was that “[he] likes going into outerspace”, and this got a big laugh from Ann and the other guy.
Also, he got Ann’s 2011 b’day wrong. It’s NOT on a Saturday. It’s on a Sunday. he seemed very agitated about getting this wrong.
My point is: His parents are putting him through SO much stress by giving him TOO much attention and notifying the press about his abilities. Don’t get me wrong: Knowing presidential tenures, days/dates, gravitational constant of Saturn, is all impressive at his age, but I strongly doubt that he knows anything than the recitation of words. I knew a kid who knew what 6 X 8 was, but he didn’t know 5 X 8.
When the differential between Pranav’s IQ and his peers diminish, the world will notice him a lot less. I hope that he makes it OK.