Fabulous Five

 

Fabulous Five

Daniel Monteiro, Gopal Kharvi, Prithvish, Sanjay Dayanand and Tanushree...These are the “Fabulous Five!”

    There are some things common in the fabulous five (hereafter referred to as Fab5). That is, the Fab5 are all proud Guinness Record Holders from Udupi District. However, the scope of this article is not merely to make a profile of the Fab5 but also to illustrate what one can achieve if one “dwells in possibilities.”

One by one, he watched the collection grow; just as he watched his three children grow!

    Daniel Monteiro, a resident of Kumragodu village in Brahmavar, is an Office Assistant at the St. Mary's Syrian College at Brahmavar in Udupi District. Daniel developed the habit of collecting stamps at the age of eleven when he was told by a teacher that everybody should develop a hobby.

    Daniel began by collecting stamps of all types of birds and later on went on to specialise in water birds. Monteiro “flew” into the Guinness Book World Records in May 2012 for having the largest collection of stamps featuring birds. Today Daniel has 4,911 stamps on birds from 263 countries. The earlier record was held by Paul-Erwin Oswald of Germany, who had a collection of 2,166 stamps on birds from 126 countries.

    Before the Guinness record, Daniel had already set his name in the Limca Book of Records for his collection of stamps on ducks. In addition, he also has three entries in the India Book of Records - for largest collection of stamps on ducks, largest collection of stamps on birds, and largest one-man exhibition (Birdpex-2011). Daniel has organised 163 exhibitions on philately and 31 workshops on environment and philately. He has been honoured with 10 international awards by Belgium, Austria, South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Korea, Indonesia, China and also bagged 21 national-level and 13 state-level awards.

    There is a saying that that “who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.” What better testimony to this statement then Daniel Monteiro?

True greatness lies in doing small things!

    Sanjay Dayanand has demonstrated the big potential of small things. Sanjay entered the Guinness Book of World Records in March 2011 for his miniature idol of Krishna, also known as Nano Krishna.

    Sanjay is a 27 year-old lad from Kaadur near Kokkarne in Udupi District. He had a passion for trying unique things and so he began with the making of a one-centimetre clay idol of Lord Ganesha. Since his childhood, the deft hands of Sanjay had been making clay idols of the elephant god every Ganesha Chaturthi and that helped him fine tune his skills. 

    Sanjay’s one-cm mini-Ganesha not only became a talk of the town, but also won him first Guinness Book of World Records title. But the joy was short-lived for him, as a similar work, on a groundnut wiped out the record. Not deterred, Sanjay went on to give a two-mm lead the shape of Lord Ganesha, helping him reclaim the title on March 9, 2011. On that day Sanjay announced that he would continue his record by creating similar work on Krishna. It became a reality in April 2011 when he carved a miniature model of Lord Krishna -1.5 mm tall and one mm wide - on the tip of a pencil lead to enter the Guinness Book. The needle used for hemming is the only tool that Sanjay uses for the job. Remarkably, he does not depend on any lenses to get a closer look of the lead. When he began to work on the micro-mini Ganesha, he took a fortnight to complete. In the case of Krishna, it was just a couple of minutes.

    Albert Einstein once remarked “I wish to do something great and wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they were great and wonderful.” The story of Sanjay demonstrates that the “great and wonderful things” can be achieved by doing the “little things like they were great and wonderful!”

Do not wait for your ship to come in; swim out to it!

    In December 2013, Gopal Kharvi created a Guinness World Record by swimming the farthest distance “wearing handcuffs and leg irons.”

    Swimmer Gopal Kharvi is a native of Kodi Kanyana near Sasthan in Udupi District. Kharvi swam 3.07 kilometres from St. Mary’s Island to Malpe Beach wearing handcuffs and leg shackles. Mr. Kharvi started the feat on December 1, 2013 at 7.37 a.m. from St. Mary’s Island and reached Malpe Beach at 10.20 a.m. Kharvi took 2 hours 43 minutes and 45 seconds to complete the distance of 3.07 kilometres distance.

    Kharvi has said that to have made the Guinness World Record was a dream come true. “The waves were rough and the wind was blowing against me. But I persevered and continued swimming,” he had said on completion of his hand and leg bound feat. But his swim against the tide was as metaphorical as it was literal. He faced major financial encumbrances in realizing his dream. He had raised a loan Rs. 10.5 lakh to realise this dream.

    The financial difficulty was not his sole adversity. The Guinness Record feat achieved in 2013 was his second attempt at the record. In January 2012, though Gopal covered the distance of nine km in just 2.14:14 hours, his feat failed get a mention in the book as the proceedings were not videographed using a GPS camera which was a prerequisite to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records. Persistence has the power to change failure into an extraordinary achievement!

She is officially amazing!

    Tanushree Pitrodi has created a Guinness World Record on April 7, 2018. This nine-year-old from Pitrodi near Udyavara is latest entry from Udupi District into the Guinness Book of World Records. She is the daughter of the couple Udaykumar and Sandhya from Pitrodi.

    Tanushree created the Guinness World Record by completing 42 rounds of Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana in a span of a minute. Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana is considered to be one of the hardest yogasanas. She performed this asana by lying on the ground with her face facing front, maintaining the chest fixed onto the ground, bending forward the remaining body and taking it around in circles with help of her feet by keeping the chest and head as the pivot.

    Tanushree managed to break the previous world record set by a boy from Palestine. In 2017, a 12-year-old Palestinian kid Mohammed Al Sheik had managed to perform Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana 38 times in a minute. By, successfully completing Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana 42 times in a minute, Tanushree broke the previous record by a huge margin of four revolutions in a minute.

    A Class IV student of St. Cecily’s Higher Primary School, Udupi, Tanushree learned to perform body revolutions by watching videos on YouTube. She had practiced rigorously for four months prior to the record-breaking feat which was demonstrated at Ammanna Ramanna Shetty Conference Hall in Udupi in the presence of Guinness Book of World Record officer Swapnil Dangrikar from Mumbai. Minutes after she was handed over the World Record certificate, Tanushree showed immense maturity by dedicating her Guinness Record to her dear India!

Swapnil Dangrikar shook his head in disbelief and muttered “she is officially amazing!”

Breaking the world record is my dream...

It was in the year 1974 that Rubik's Cube, a 3-D combination puzzle game was invented by Erno Rubik, the Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture.  The puzzle has fascinated the world since then and there are several quests to find the fastest fingers first!  The record as of now is a mind boggling 5.5 seconds.

In Prithvish Bhat, son of Shyamprasad Bhat and Prasanna Prasad of Cherkady near Brahmavar, Udupi District has found its own champion. At a state level competition, he was able to align the colours on all six sides of the cube (which is the essence of the puzzle) in under a minute, in fact, in 38 seconds flat, which is no mean feat!

But the Guinness Record feat was something different. On October 2, 2016 Prithvish a Final Year Electronics student at SDM Engineering College, Ujire entered the Guinness Book by creating separate pictures on two sides of Rubik’s Cube by using as many as 4, 500 cubes. In the Indraprastha Auditorium at Ujire, Prithvish created Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Bean on two sides of the Rubik’s Cube. A total number of 20 students joined hands with Prithvish in helping him set the Guinness Record.

The world record winning feat took almost five hours for Prithvish and his team. The team used a total of 4, 500 cubes of 5.7 mm thickness. At the end of the feat, they had created pictures measuring 4.33 metres in height and 3.46 metres in width. 

Prithvish is observes that his engineering education has nothing to do with his puzzle solving abilities. Practice is what it takes, he says. He learnt to solve the puzzle eight months ago and has practiced the art (or the science as his book on the subject reveals) repeatedly over the last eight months, each time bettering his own time.

The fastest in solving the Rubik’s Cube Puzzle is a mind boggling 5.5 seconds. Breaking the world record is Prithvish’s dream. That for him is his final frontier!

As the great American Cycling Champion Jamie Paolinetti has rightly observed “limitations live only in our minds, but if we use our imagination our possibilities become limitless.”