Higher, faster, a bit odder Largest laddoo in the world (29,465 kg) PVVS Mallikharjuna Rao
It’s been called a national pastime. Just last year, Indians set and broke a total of 80 Guinness records, amid applications to break thousands more. Guinness does not approve every record-setting idea, so, to accommodate the growing and rather amoebic ambitions, new record-registering books have come up in recent decades. While the Limca Book of Records just turned 30, there’s also the India Book of Records, which published its 16th edition in 2020, the Golden Book of Records and Wonder Book of Records (founded in 2010). Take a look at some of the most recent and most outrageous individual record-setters from India.
Longest hand-painted sari (9.38 metres) Sindhu KP
Sindhu KP, 45, a costume designer from Malappuram, Kerala, used a white-and-gold kasavu sari as her canvas during the lockdown, setting records in the India Book of Records, Asia Book of Records and others.
Sindhu owns and runs Sapthavarna, a textile studio for hand-painted saris. With business slow in the lockdown, she decided to paint a timeline of the tragedy unfolding around her on a sari. She storyboarded 20 frames on how Covid-19 was spreading and 26 frames on how to keep it at bay. “I needed a longish sari to paint this on, and so I ordered one of the required length from a village of traditional weavers,” she says.
On the garment, she painted policemen and women, frontline workers, sanitation drives, with the virus lurking in and around the frames as it spread in maroon through her monochrome palette. She captured Kerala’s early success and the state’s food distribution campaigns. There are even imagined scenes from a Covid treatment centre.
The last image is that of a woman with the earth in her womb. “The idea is for us to take notice of the earth, which must be protected with the same amount of care we would a woman with child,” she says.
From concept to finishing touches took Sindhu 75 days. “When things return to normal, I plan to showcase my sari at exhibitions, so people never forget,” she says.
28 records over four years
Prabhakar Reddy P
Nellore-based martial arts master Prabhakar Reddy, 37, has been breaking records since 2017. One video that went viral recently was his attempt to smash the most coconuts around a person’s body with a hammer, while blindfolded. Reddy trained for five months, using a wooden dummy.
He’s set records for most walnuts smashed with a nunchaku in one minute (108; record set in 2017), most hits of a person with water balloons in one minute (48; set in 2018), most watermelons chopped in one minute while positioned on a person’s head (47; in 2019).
While many of his records have been broken, Reddy broke four during the pandemic. Along with the coconuts record, he broke records for most bottle caps removed with the head in one minute (68), most watermelons chopped on one’s stomach in one minute (38) and most watermelons chopped on someone else’s in one minute (64).
“It’s my way of showing the world the power of pursuing physical and mental fitness, as well as showcasing India’s talent on the international stage,” he says.
World’s largest marker pen, and caricature Muhammed Dileef
It took three grown men to help Muhammed Dileef write with his world’s largest marker pen. As the Guinness record holder stumbled along, the word “INDIA” took shape on a whiteboard.
The pen is 9 ft long and 1 ft wide, made of PVC pipe, wood and sponge, among other materials. It took him two months to create, and he did it, he told the Guinness committee, to motivate youngsters to read.
A political cartoonist, Dileef also runs a chain of galleries in Bengaluru, Kochi, Coimbatore, Madurai, Thrissur, Palakkad, Kozhikode and Doha in Qatar.
He set his first record in the Limca Book of Records in 2011, with the world’s largest caricature — a drawing of Mahatma Gandhi spread over 3,333 sq ft.
In 2017 he entered the Arabian Book of World Records with a record for the largest ride-able bicycle — 9 metres long and 5.5 metres high. He’s also been working on the world’s largest hand-written Quran.
You’ll break a tooth faster than you’ll break this record. When PVVS Mallikharjuna Rao, 54, who runs a sweetmeats business in Andhra Pradesh, set the Guinness record for the largest laddoo in the world in 2016, he pretty much sealed the deal.
Weighing close to 30 tonnes (almost three times the previous record) and costing over Rs 50 lakh to make, its 12 ft across.
His obsession with giant sweetmeats started in 2011, when he made a laddoo weighing 500 kg as a gift it to the Khairatabad Ganesh, one of the tallest Ganesh idols in Hyderabad. He did this for five years, creating heavier laddoos each year. By 2015, his offering weighed more than 6.6 tonnes.
A shop next to Rao’s held the record for world’s largest laddoo all this time. In 2015, their 8-tonne record was broken by the Arasuri Ambaji Mata Devasthan, a Gujarat temple trust. Their orb was over 11 tonnes.
Rao decided to outdo everyone in style. Over 100 people worked for three days, mixing dizzying amounts of gram flour, almonds, cashews, sugar, cardamom and ghee. Assembly alone took over 24 hours, one giant tub of boondi at a time. Scaffolding allowed workers to compress the ingredients in place with instruments that looked like giant potato mashers.
Too big for the local Hyderabad deity, this mega laddoo was taken to Vishakapatnam, where a 78-ft idol stood ready to receive it. In the following days, thousands of devotees would devour it. Rao’s record currently stands unbroken.