Durban has lost a remarkable son. Sathasivan Arumugam, the city’s extraordinary numbers man, passed away last Sunday at the age of 55, following a short illness. His funeral took place on Tuesday.
His death is a poignant reminder of a life touched by a rare and astonishing gift - one that set him apart yet was perhaps never fully understood or appreciated.
By the educational standards of five decades ago, Sathasivan was regarded as a slow learner. How tragic that a label so easily attached to him may have obscured the extraordinary ability that lay beneath the surface.
For while he may have struggled with some aspects of conventional learning, he possessed a rare and astonishing gift that few could begin to comprehend. He was, in his own unique way, a man of exceptional gifts.
I first met Sathasivan of Havenside, Chatsworth, 44 years ago. I was told about a man who could do something that seemed almost beyond human comprehension - a calendrical savant who, despite his intellectual disability, could tell you the day of the week on which a particular date fell, often within a split second.
I was intrigued. Here was a man whose abilities challenged the conventional understanding of intelligence, reminding us that brilliance does not always arrive in the form we expect, nor does it always find recognition in a world that tends to measure people by familiar standards.
Give Sathasivan any date from the previous century, and the answer would come almost instantaneously. There was no need to consult a calendar, no hesitation, no laborious calculation. The answer simply seemed to live within him.
Tell him, for example, that the date was July 31, 1920, and he would tell you without a moment’s delay that it was a Saturday. I gave him the date of my birth seven decades ago.
He correctly said I was born on a Wednesday. I gave him my siblings’ dates of birth. In each case, he correctly rattled off the day of the week that my sisters and brother were born. He was also right when I gave him the date of birth of my wife and my photographer colleague.
Because I had no rationale for Sathasivan’s ability, his gift appeared uncanny, rather strange or mysterious in an unsettling way. His genius inspired wonder and admiration, but also invited a more profound question: how many remarkable abilities lie hidden within people whom society is too quick to underestimate?
How did the existence of this talent surface?
According to Linda Daramalingam, Sathasivan’s sister, when he was about nine years old, he had gone on holiday to the home of some relatives. Stuck indoors one rainy afternoon, he and his cousins were discussing their dates of birth.
As his cousins stated their dates of birth, he was able to instantly tell them what day it was. And each time he was correct. The amazed cousins told his parents.
Neuropsychologists at the University of KwaZulu-Natal conducted scientific studies in the early 1980s to ascertain the boy’s mental processes. There was no clear-cut answer for hi exceptional ability. Several academics postulated or hypothesised theories.
Some academics said he had probably extensively memorised the calendar. I thought this was a rather ridiculous conjecture. Where would he have got calendars for 100 years back?
And his family said he had never scrutinised any calendar. The internet was still unknown then. One professor said there was a lengthy mathematical formula for working out the day of a given date. It is not possible Sathasivan could run through this formula in tenth of a second.
So, in short, boffins could not figure out the secret of his skills.
Daramalingam said Sathasivan was found to be autistic. This was not recognised when he was young and he was relegated to the general diagnosis of mental retardation. He was sent to a trade school where he learnt woodwork and metalwork. He earned the nicknames “Calendar” and “Numbers”, the latter for being able to recall a vehicle’s registration number many years later, after just seeing it once.
After finishing school, he worked as a carpenter at a furniture factory and later took on administrative duties at other firms. In recent years he was jobless and yearned to work again.
Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, a mathematics expert, Hindu scholar and proficient singer of Carnatic or Tamil classical songs, Poobhalan Pillay, said the saddest part of Sathasivan’s story is not simply that he is no more, but that we may never have fully understood the remarkable mind he possessed while he was still among us.
“We were quick to measure him by what he struggled to do, yet perhaps too slow to appreciate what he could do that so few others could. A rare gift lived within him, challenging our assumptions about intelligence and human potential.
“Did we give him the understanding, recognition and opportunities he deserved? It is a question that may now linger long after his passing. Sathasivan is gone, but his life leaves us with an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, it is not the person who is limited by society’s understanding, but society itself that is limited by its failure to understand the person,” Prof Pillay said.