Lakkoju Sanjeeva Raya Sarma (27 November 1907 – 2 December 1998) was born in Kallur village in Proddutur Taluk of Cudapah district in Andhra Pradesh in the year 1907 on November the 27 th. His mother was Nagamamba and the father, Peda Pullaiah. The home nurse who assisted in the child birth advised the parents to kill the baby and bury him, as he was blind by birth. Some relatives went far ahead and threw rice grains in his throat, to kill him. But Sanjeeva Raya Sarma survived as the destiny had other plans for him.
Childhood
He was raised mostly by his mother as his father died when he was very young. Braille was not invented by that time, and Sarma did not have any aided schools or organizations for blind to get trained. He just used to learn from other pupils when they read the lessons out loud for him. He followed small calculations that he used to hear from his parents and nurtured his skill on to became the ‘mathematical genius’ without knowing how 1,2,3s actually look like. His elder sister used to read loudly her school lessons at home while doing revision and Sharma used to attentively listen to her and remember them, particularly the mathematics. His help to the local farmers with their calculations on their crop, got him some perks to live on. He was also attracted to classical music and started learning violin, while pioneering in math.
Public performances
Lakkoju Sanjeevaraya Sarma got married to Adi Lakshmamma in his 19th year. His very first public stage performance was given at the Andhra Mahasabha held in Nandyal on 15 November 1928, in an event chaired by Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishna. The saga continued till 1995, gaining high accolades and respects from various intellectual communities across India and eventually around the globe. Many awards were won, many records were broken as time passed by.
Indian mathematical prodigies like Bhaskaracharya, Srinivasa Ramanujam and Shakuntala Devi were either well educated or trained unlike Sarma, who did not have any education nor received any training, and never saw any alphabet or letters as he was born blind. He cultivated his sheer brilliance just from listening to others.
Sanjeevaraya Sarma and his wife Adi Lakshmamma were invited to Rajampeta (Kadapa Dist, Andhra Pradesh) in 1960 by Capt. Dr. Mohana Rao Varanasi to give a performance at Govt. High School. The highlights of this performance were answering mathematical problems by playing his Violin along with various songs. Later, impressed by his talent, Dr. Mohan Rao introduced Sanjeevaraya Sarma to many other Schools and Colleges for performances, where he was paid a performance-fee.
Unique Mathematical Avadhanams
Sarma gave many mathematical Avadhanams (Ganitavadhanams), educated people and surprised the elite. (Avadhanam is a genre of performance in India, where a performer called the avadhāni answers challenging questions from several questioners parallelly. The most popular variety, called sāhitya (literary) avadhānam involves the performer composing poetry, thereby entertaining the audience and demonstrating his poetic skills. This art form was developed particularly by Telugu poets in medieval times). Once a question was raised, Sarma used to play the violin for few seconds and then immediately tell the answer. He travelled widely and gave about 6,000 performances in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi. One of his most memorable performances was on 7 December 1966 at Sri Krishna Devaraya Andhra Bhasha Nilayam, Hyderabad. “What is 2 power 103?” The answer was 32 digits long, and he took no time to answer. “ If you number the alphabet ‘Ka’ to ‘Ksha’ (telugu alphabets) serially like 1, 2, 3 etc., what is the product of ‘Sa’, ‘Re’, ‘Ga’, ‘Ma’, ‘Pa’, ‘Da’, ‘Ni’?” The spontaneous answer came immediately “80 Crores, 5 lakhs and 6 thousand”. He received many gold medals, honours and felicitations.
Ups and downs
He was the first person to design a calendar that fits in our palm and covers 4,000 years. The then president of India ‘Dr. Rajendra Prasad’ was so impressed by this genius, that he sent money through MO (Money Order) to Sarma as a kind gesture. Sarma was an inspiration to the youth at colleges and Universities; many followed his footsteps and generated lots of interest in Mathematics. He was honoured with various gold medals from different institutions and presented with countless certificates. It is his back luck, that his 14 gold medals were stollen in a railway compartment on October 10th, 1964, while he was travelling from Renigunta to Tirupati.
He was invited to US in 1993 by the local Telugu committees there, but due to delay in getting Visa, he couldn’t attend the convention there.
Sarma’s special feats
His unique feat was giving the exact number of Paddy seeds that can be arranged in doubling progression from one to 17 zillion millions on 64 squares of a Chess Board. This reminds the old ‘rice grains’ puzzle which is as follows. As a reward for defeating the king in a chess game, the winner asks the king to put 1 rice grain in the first square of the chess board and then double it to 2 and keep it in the 2nd square, then 4 in 3rd and 8 in 4th, and similarly until all the 64 squares are filled up. To sum up all those rice grains is not an easy task. But Sarma gave the answer without any hesitation. “1,84,46,74,40,73,70,95,51,615″ (1 Crore 84 lakh 46 thousands of 74 Crores 40 lakhs and 73 thousands of 70 Crores and 95 lakhs and 51 thousand and 615), Sarma’s voice resonated with confidence from the dais, swiftly.
If a square meter of rice bag can hold 1 crore 50 lakh grains, it would require 1 crore 20 lakh crore square meters of rice bags to hold all the grains on the chess board. If you fill these grains in a 4-meter high and a 10-meter-wide tube, you would require 300 crore kilometers of tube, which is twice the distance from Earth to Sun.
He could spontaneously reveal not only the Day, but the entire Zodiac of any given date in the calendar along with astrological predictions, which is very unique and not attempted by any mathematical wizard in the world. Though born blind, and he never went to any school yet he learnt numbers and imagined their compounded shapes to spontaneously give a solution to any problem, faster than the computer.
Austere life
In spite acquiring name and fame Sanjeeva Raya Sarma was poor. He did not aspire to earn wealth and was content with leading a normal life with bare necessities. He refused to accept any charity and instead preferred to demonstrate his mathematical skills to the public for a nominal fee by educating them on maths. He played the violin every evening at Sri Kalahastheeswara temple, Sri Kalahasthi, Andhra Pradesh for an honorarium from the Devasthanam authorities. His wife passed away on 5th January, 1994 at Kalahasthi. He received honorary doctorate from Sri Venkateswara University in 1996. His visiting card contains the following words- “Patronized by Sri Babu Rajendra Prasad, Sri Pandit Nehru, Sir George Standlee- X Viceroy of India, Sri N.T. Rama Rao.” On 2 nd December, 1998 the “Ganitha Brahma” Lakkoju Sanjeevaraya Sarma died at the feet of Sri Kaalahastheeswara, in Kalahasti.
Sarma’s life is a lesson and reminder to the governments, Universities and the society that we need to have a system in place to identify, recognise and patronise born geniuses like Sarma so that they could become role model and inspire others to become legends in their chosen fields, without undergoing too much suffering like what Sarma went through.
