Some just call him ‘Google’. Others endearingly add ‘boy’ to it. Five-year-old Anmol Swami, though, doesn’t really care as long as he gets to answer the questions awestruck people bombard him with.
“Who is the prime minister of India,” someone will ask. To which the little kid, keeping a straight face, will start not with Narendra Modi but with Jawaharlal Nehru, then coming down to the current BJP PM. Sometimes, just to indulge himself, Anmol will then reverse the order and blurt out the names.
Ask him the capital of any country in the world, from Ethopia to Cuba, and he won’t miss a single one. Anmol, whose prodigious memory power is slowly making him a household name not just in Meerut but even in the neighbouring districts, in fact got the title of ‘Google boy’ when he was just 3. And so widespread has his fame become that the BJP’s UP chief, Laxmikant Bajapai, has now written to chief minister Akhilesh Yadav to give the little kid some incentive so that he can go on with whatever he needs.
“Anmol did not utter a single word till he turned three,” recalled his mother Rachna Swami. “We took him to a doctor who advised us to admit him to a school. Soon he began to speak, but not just using small words. He would talk in full sentences.”
A few days after going to school, Anmol surprised his family when one day as his mother was teaching his elder sister some general knowledge on countries and capitals he had, while playing, memorised it all. Rachna said, “I was teaching my daughter some GK questions. Anmol was in the same room listening to it. The next day when I started asking my daughter the same questions as revision, Anmol interrupted and started answering instead. That was when we thought, ‘Hey, what’s going on here’.”
Anmol was later “officially” given the title of “Meerut’s Google boy” in February 2014 by a city-based school. Soon after this, all the three children of the Swamis were admitted to The Adhyyan School in Meerut and were promised free education, stationery, uniform and conveyance until they completed their schooling.
Bajpai, who has taken up Anmol’s case, told TOI on Monday, “I have written to CM Akhilesh Yadav, requesting for some monetary grants for a talented boy like Anmol. He has been honoured by various bodies, but no government help has come his way. I hope this will lead to something positive for the 5-year-old.”
