Believe it or not -- a 14-year-old rustic lad has baffled all and sundry with his knowledge of English language in a nondescript village in Saharanpur district in Western Uttar Pradesh, about 500 km from Lucknow.
Hailing from a poor illiterate Dalit labourer's family, Rajesh has literally baffled all and sundry when one fine morning he started jabbering in fluent English.
The boy who did not know a word of English was suddenly found to be speaking the language fluently and that too with an American accent.
"The first time he did so was about nine months back and I just could not believe my ears," his school principal Shishu Pal Singh Verma told this scribe over telephone from Rampur-Manihara village, about 21 km from Saharanpur town.
Though widely believed to be a case of re-birth, Rajesh has a scientific explanation to it.
"I do not believe in re-birth because there is no scientific basis to it; I am firmly of the view that memory cannot be destroyed until the time sound waves remain in the world," he was stated to have told his principal.
Significantly, Rajesh has already written three detailed research papers -- on memory, sociology and liberalization.
"Initially, I did not take him seriously, but during the last Republic Day celebration at the school he astounded all of us by making an extempore address in fluent and chaste English," said principal Verma, who also heads the William Jefferson Clinton Science and Technology Centre,