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To Each His Own Fingernails

There was something awesomely, enormously, trifling about the whole event. I was conscious of it every time I walked into that room -- and as my beleaguered wife and friends will testify, I was tempted to walk in there many more times than once. But I ask you, can you truly blame me? After all, it wasn't anything ordinary on view in that room in Bangalore. It was nothing less than a man trying determinedly to set his 16th world record.

He was playing "nonstop solo carrom" for 24 hours.

I swear I am not making this up. Prof (Dr) S Ramesh Babu sat at a carrom board, slotting pieces smoothly, expertly into its pockets. Each time he cleared the board, he would rise, step over to the other side of the board and sit down, flexing his fingers and neck muscles while a troop of attendants set the pieces up again so the nonstop assault on the world record could continue. Two or three of the attendants were deputed to keep statistics. These were updated on a big board from time to time under such arcane headings as "Time to Clear Board" and "Average Number of Strikes."

I was truly awestruck. Truly unable, too, to recall the last time I had been witness to so much solemnity over so much inconsequence. That's why I was drawn there over and over again. As for Prof (Dr) S Ramesh Babu, BSc, BE, Ph D, MISS (USA), MIE, MIIM, MIIF, MISTAM and GUINNESS RECORD HOLDER (I'm just looking at his card) -- well, he sat there unperturbed, flicking the striker across the board with a steely calm, seemingly sure he had secured a momentous place in history, seemingly unaware of just how foolish he looked doing it.

Of course, Babu was only following some very illustrious, if a tad milky, footsteps. I'm going to remind you of some of them before returning to his great deeds.

Pune's Milind Deshmukh forced his way into the Guinness Book of World Records some years ago. He walked 104 km with a milk bottle balanced on his head. In doing so, he smashed the previous record, a mere 98 km by a mere twit of an American woman. (The bottle wasn't smashed). Don't scoff at this and I promise you I shall. For like Roger Bannister and his 4-minute mile in the early 50s, Deshmukh overcame a major psychological barrier by hitting the century mark. We can now expect to see dozens -- hundreds -- of walkers routinely doing 100 km and more with milk on their heads.

Now why we would want to see something like that is a question I won't tackle just now, though I suspect I answered it those times I was drawn to Babu's carroming efforts. In any case, it turns out that Pune is a veritable hotbed of Guinness Book activity. Besides a milk bottle walker, it claims among its residents a man who grew his fingernails since about the time of Bannister's mile, clawing into the Book that way. Once in, he announced that he wanted to cut off the nails and sell them; his asking price was ten thousand dollars. I swear I am not making this up either. I understand the queue to buy what was clearly the world's most desirable living room centrepiece was almost as long as the nails themselves.

Inspired by Deshmukh, or perhaps not, or maybe just fleeing from the sale on fingernails, another Indian once ran across the United States of America backwards.

I've not been able to find out if he had a milk bottle on his head. But he was probably passed by Salauddin and Neena Chaudhury of Calcutta. Their Guinness glory came in an Indian Contessa, in which they drove around the world in 39 days. What set the record -- the 39 days or the fact that the Contessa made it -- remains unclear. They did not, however, drive backwards.

Hair raising achievements, all of them. Which is probably why KR Bheel was last heard of furiously cultivating his facial hair, trying to regain the record for the longest moustache in the world. A Swede took it away. (The record, that is, not the moustache). The Swede's record stands at 10-odd feet: 10 very odd feet, in fact. Bheel is closing in on it, though I will not mention here the rumour that this hairy hero has been frustrated by his moustache's inability, so far, to overtake his wife's.

Then there's two-year-old Hemadri Patel. On December 23, her parents lowered her into the mucky waters off Bombay's Gateway of India. There, she "swam" for one hour and 20 minutes in an attempt to set a world record. Can't speak for you, but when I saw a press picture of this little tot paddling away, there was only world record that came to mind. That's the one for the Highest Number of Tight Slaps Delivered to Idiot Parents, and I would dearly love to be the one to set it.

Placed against these fine achievements, you will agree, Babu's carrom-playing takes on a whole new light. It looks sillier than ever.

Still, that's OK, because I was thoroughly entertained by the whole experience: not least because I went through the details of his various other records. I would be simply delighted to share them with you.

For example, on February 12, 1994, Babu set an "Inaugural World Record" for "Longest Uninterrupted Table Tennis Tossings, alternatively on both sides of the bat (without changing the position of the feet)." He managed 9900 of these tossings in 1 hour, 5 minutes and 40 seconds.

On April 14, 1994, he set an Inaugural World Record for "Longest Uninterrupted Shuttle Tossings, Alternatively on Both Sides Of The Racket." That day, 5011 such tossings took him 1 hour, 30 minutes and 8 seconds.

In 1996, he set a "National Record in Marathon Lecturing:" 26 hours worth, on Computer Aided Numerical Techniques. At least three different times, he has set a "National Record for Flying a Kite With The Longest Tail": 50.485 metres long in 1990, 224 metres in 1994 (1994 was a good year, all said and done) and 622.8 metres in 1996. In 1997, he turned one half of a table tennis table vertical and patted a ball against it 18,737 times in 1 hour, 33 minutes and 53 seconds; "position of the feet unchanged till completing 17,568 strokes." Those feet, or that feat, or both, gave him an Inaugural World Record for the "Longest Uninterrupted Solo Table Tennis Rally." His Guinness entry is for the same category, but "played over the net using 2 bats, one in each hand:" 6,670 strokes in 54 minutes and 54 seconds.

As you can see, Prof (Dr) S Ramesh Babu is a much-accomplished man. And yet, you have no inkling at all of what I consider his finest moment, his crowning glory.

That came on April 5, 1998. That day, he set an Inaugural World Record in "Vegetable Cutting." He picked up a "Single Cucumber Weighing 1070 g and 28 cm in length." 2 hours, 52 minutes and 21 seconds later, he had sliced it into 120,060 pieces.

Allow me to quote from the certificate he was awarded for this achievement. "The cucumber was first cut to almost circular 80 slices and each slice was in turn taken up for giving it counted number of nearly equi-spaced and parallel vertical cuts followed by similar horizontal cuts. The corresponding number of pieces generated were noted in the log book by referring to a previously authenticated document comprising of a table of numbers generated based on independent mathematical modelling procedures and computer softwares specifically developed for the present record's purpose. The corresponding times were also recorded by using digital display stop watches. The average size of the cut pieces were calculated to be 1.46 x 1.90 x 3.50 mm."

Takes your breath away, no?

You see, Indians are mounting assault after assault on the hallowed pages of the Guinness Book. Most of them, including those with a healthy interest in milk, also appear to have imbibed inordinate amounts of Guinness Beer.

So I wish you a happy record-breaking New Year. Please drop in sometime to see my toenail clippings. I have 327,742 of them.

Dilip D'Souza