Jim Ankan Deka | Music, Photography and More

There are people we say who are gifted. There are people who are differently abled. And there are people who have triggered their talents to do extraordinary deeds. But what can we say about a person who can listen to a ten minutes piano solo once and deliver a ditto rendition instantly? Can we call that person Superhuman? Derek Paravicini is a pianist with superhuman talents. He is one of the few gifted people with 'absolute pitch'. He can listen to a song or tune once and can perform it on piano exactly the same. He can identify every note in a chord. While most musicians can pick out only five notes from a chord, Derek can distinguish up to 20. The irony is, Derek is blind and was born with a 'savant syndrome'. Derek was born to Nicolas Paravicini and Mary Ann Parker Bowles on July 26, 1979. He was a 25 weeks premature baby weighing just a pound and a half and due to the oxygen therapy given during his time in a neonatal intensive care unit, lost his eye sight. H...

I was kind of little reluctant about my trip to Dehradun, because I had just over 24 hrs at hand. What could I have accomplished in one day, trying to travel the beautiful land of the Gharwalis on the foothills of the Himalayas. But being a travel addict, I had to give into my passion. So my travel partner Parmita and I booked the tickets from Bangalore and reached the Jolly Grant Airport on September 21, 2013. Though we went to Mussoorie before, we had little clue about Dehradun. And as this was more of an unplanned back-packing kind of visit, we did not even book the hotel in advance. So, after reaching the city, we looked around and checked into a neat hotel - Hotel Doon Castle . The hotel was clean and what we found out was that, the 'Queen rooms' are far better than the 'King rooms'. Clean toilet, decent food and less charges - 3 things a traveler looks for before choosing a hotel. Doon Castle did provide us with all of those. Though we would have loved to re...