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India Produces So Many Child Prodigies By- Melvin Durai Melvin Durai is an Indiana-based writer and humorist. Born in Tamil Nadu, India, he grew up in Zambia and moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s. In 1995, while working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Chambersburg, Pa., he began writing a regular humor column. His weekly column now appears in several newspapers and on a number of Web sites. He also writes a twice-monthly column on Indian and Indian-American issues. He is a diehard fan of the National Football League and also likes to run, lift weights and play soccer, tennis and pool. An award-winning feature writer and aspiring novelist, he plans to publish a collection of his best columns. You can write to him at comments@melvindurai.com To read his older columns, go to http://www.melvindurai.com

Did you hear about the latest Indian child prodigy? Amazing kid. A boy wonder. He's so brilliant, he managed to fool India's Department of Science and Technology (DST) into sending him to Germany to meet a group of physics Nobel laureates.

Yes, Tathagat Avtar Tulsi is truly a genius, for it's not every day that someone manages to fool the DST. Every week, perhaps, but not every day.

Tulsi convinced the DST that he had modified Einstein's equations of gravitation. Turns out, the only thing he had modified was the truth.

He has lost his credibility as a young scientist, but still has potential as a young politician.

The DST recently admitted to the Press Trust of India that it had goofed in adding the 14-year-old Patna boy to a team of young researchers that traveled to Germany in June. They discovered that he wasn't a child prodigy - he was a child fraudigy. (That's a new term, created specially for him.)

Tulsi and his father, Narayan Prasad, made a nuisance of themselves before the Nobel laureates, embarrassed the Indian team and brought disgrace to Indian science, the DST said. And the worst part is, the pair didn't get the hint not to return to India.

They didn't understand the implication when a team member said, "Germany has a strong labor force. But there's a definite shortage of computer programmers, electronics engineers, and child prodigies."

They didn't understand why everyone looked at them at the airport when a ticket clerk asked if the team was carrying any "extra baggage."

DST officials had apparently believed media reports that Tulsi had earned an MSc degree and was a genius. They now realize that, as scientists, they shouldn't rely solely on the media for their information. Next time they will also consult an astrologist.

The officials were victims not only of Tulsi's deceit and their own gullibility, but also of India's insatiable fascination with child prodigies. Every day, it seems, one kid or another is being anointed a child prodigy. In fact, there are more child prodigies in India than adult prodigies. Unless you count all the parents who've become prodigies at producing prodigies.

Among the more well-known child prodigies are 5-year-old Satya Narayanan, a maestro on the keyboard, 13-year-old Aditya Kishore Patil, a wiz at software engineering, and 10-year-old Tanvi Taneja, a genius at Bharatnatyam.

Then there's 11-year-old Priyanshu Roy, who isn't just a brilliant software engineer, he's also a classical guitarist and a published poet. He would have taken up tennis, but didn't want to embarrass Pete Sampras.

If you want to meet a child prodigy, just go to any street, find a resident and say, "I have brought some gifts for the child prodigy. Please take me to the genius."

The resident may look a little puzzled. That's a good sign. It means that the neighborhood has more than one child prodigy.

You can be more specific by using terms such as "the brilliant mathematician," "the amazing musician" or "the astounding carrom player."

When you are led to the home of the genius, make sure you show your respect by bowing or kneeling. You may also kiss the genius's feet.

But if you happen to be led to the home of Tathagat Avtar Tulsi, please run away quickly. He's no ordinary genius.

If he's capable of finagling a free trip to Germany from the DST, imagine what he'd get from you.

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