Doctors baffled by hermit who shuns food and water
 

Doctors baffled by hermit who shuns food and water

DAVID ORR IN DELHI


THE winter months are the time when India?s hermits and holy men leave their freezing mountain retreats and come down to the towns to gather their devotees and collect alms.

But none of the so-called ?babas? is exciting more interest at the moment than the 76-year-old Prahlad Jani.

Jani claims not to have eaten or drunk anything for the past 60 years. Doctors in the western state of Gujurat, who recently completed a 10-day controlled test on the illiterate hermit, say the man is a medical miracle.

Dr Dinesh Desai, deputy superintendent of Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad, said: "What?s really extraordinary is not that he didn?t eat or drink anything in that time but that he didn?t pass any urine or a stool. Even a normal person who fasts will pass urine. If he doesn?t, renal failure will set in after 48 hours and eventually he?ll go into a coma and probably suffer brain damage."

Jani, on the other hand, seems to thrive on his self-imposed regime. The multi-disciplinary medical research team was surprised that after his daily sonography exam on the ground floor, the septuagenarian climbed six flights of stairs like a man half his age. "I feel no need for food or water," said the fakir after he was discharged from hospital. Jani also claims to have spent a number of decades of his life living in a cave in total silence.

"He must be getting his energy from some source but we don?t know what it is," a puzzled Desai told Scotland on Sunday. He insists that Jani was kept in a sealed-off room under constant video surveillance and closely monitored.

This being India, the number of Jani?s devotees has grown considerably since his release from hospital. Not all of his fellow countrymen, however, are impressed.

"I?ve no doubt the man is a fraud who?s managed to trick a lot of gullible people," said Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association in the capital, Delhi. "We don?t trust the hospital tests and the circumstances in which they were done. We?ve asked this ?baba? to demonstrate his claim in front of us but his followers have refused to co-operate."

The fasting exploits of Jani belong to a tradition of apparently superhuman feats attributed to Indian holy men. In the late Middle Ages, Le Livre des Merveilles, a book of fantastic tales from the Orient, stunned European readers with descriptions of Indians who "lived on air" and survived on "the smell of flowers".

In India, spiritual enlightenment has long been sought through physical deprivation and self-mortification. Witness the fakir and his bed of needle-sharp nails or the ?sadhu? who walks on red-hot coals. In recent years, Bhagwas Das gained notoriety as ?Standing Baba?. His claim to fame is his boast that he stood for 28 years without once sitting or lying down.The once-upright Das, who goes naked apart from a metal chastity belt, eventually succumbed to gravity when his legs became swollen and covered with sores.

Even more painful must be the stunt favoured by Lal Baba. The diminutive Lal is believed to earn a small fortune at festivals by lifting a 30kg weight attached only to his penis. He is so small, he has to stand on two bricks to raise the stone a few inches off the ground.

These performances are usually given at Kumbh Mela religious festival which takes place in north India every 12 years. In 2001, a Maha (or ?Big?) Kumbh Mela, held once every 124 years, drew millions of pilgrims and tourists to Allahabad on the banks of Ganges.

he is eating his own shit and drinking his own piss... problem solved