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Doing things differently

From memorising tables to making kababs, the Limca Book of Records 2006 documents an interesting set of feats by as many as 5000 people. RANA SIDDIQUI speaks to some of them

MY FEAT (From left) Piyush Chaturvedi, A.S. Soin, Rajesh Thakka and his wife Shucheta

They believed in doing something different. And so they did it. And they did it to the extent of turning it into a feat. A feat that made their country proud. That's why the Limca Book of World Records has put them in their pages. Not one or two but as many as 5000 such people in 17 categories have found themselves in the latest Limca Book. The categories range from adventure to sports to food and medicine, astrology to painting, and more. Many of them are from Delhi and the National Capital Region. And they have quite a bunch of interesting, inspiring tales to tell.

One such achiever is A. S. Soin, a doctor with the city's Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. His claim to fame is conducting the first ever `bloodless' transplant surgery without blood transfusion on Safi, a four-year-old child from Pakistan. The operation, facilities for which are not available in Pakistan, has not only bolstered ties between the two countries but also made India proud.

Says Soin about the feat, "Generally in such operations the patients need 35 units of blood and blood-related products as plasma, etc. Bloodless doesn't mean that there was no drop of blood lost in the operation. It means there was no outside requirement for blood. For this, I combined three important surgical techniques, otherwise used separately. These are TEG (Thrombo-elasto-graph), Argon beam transfusion and co-regulation and diathermy decentralisation. Through this we burnt the tissues which reduce the loss of blood. Now we (at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital) do two such operations every week, which by any standards, is the best in the world." He says this feat has resulted in a flow of patients from Burma, Bangladesh, Dubai and Pakistan, also because in India it costs between10 and 15 lakhs but elsewhere, it costs over a crore.

What memory!

Yet another achiever is Rajesh Thakkar who surprised everyone by writing the table of a 13-digit number in one minute and 36 seconds. His wife Shucheta did the same in one minute and 21 seconds at an event held at Pragati Maidan in September 2005. They have become India's first couple to achieve the feat. Rajesh could do this by overcoming his fear of mathematics. He recalls, "I was very weak in maths and forgetful too. Once I read a quotation, which said that if a man overcomes his weakness, he can be a winner. It changed my attitude to life. Since I was weak in maths, I tried to overcome the fear by memorising tables. I began with memorising 100 tables and went on till a lakh during my studies for medical sciences some years ago. Now I can tell any number in 13 digits in reverse and forward order. I have also memorised 500 years of the calendar. I trained my wife for four days and she also joined me in making this record." Now Rajesh runs India's first institution (Innovative Brain Education) in Gurgaon that teaches students quick memorising techniques.

And there is a 22-year-old Piyush Chaturvedi from Old Delhi who has hand written the longest horoscope measuring 110 feet long and six inches wide for Anjana Sharma, an NRI from Germany. "It took me three months to complete it. It is a prediction of happenings in Anjana's life and will be valid for 68 years." Piyush made it without meeting or seeing the girl.

"I guessed her looks and the possible diseases she suffered from in her school days and they were true. I learnt the art from my grandfather Vishvanath Chaturvedi," says PiyushThat was the longest horoscope and this is about the longest kabab that Chef Rakesh Kumarof Crowne Plaza Surya hotel prepared. He says, "I wanted to do something different, so I decided to make a 40-foot long chicken kabab." Rakesh achieved it by joining skewers like a water pipe line. "Normally a tandoor is three feet so one can't make a kabab more than three feet. So I got 14 specially designed skewers for the record and kept it on 250 degree temperature and made a kabab that 40 to 60 people could eat," says Rakesh. The kabab was donated to the city NGOPalna. Rakesh's next venture is to bake "a 20-foot long cake".

There are many other interesting records in the book that has hit the market recently. It also carries motivating interviews of well-known personalities like Vijaypat Singhania, Sanjana Kapoor, Valmik Thapar to name a few.

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