Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
Hecklerspray once went an entire week without eating or drinking a single thing. Well – maybe we should clarify that. We didn’t eat anything with our mouths for an entire week. We did microwave plenty of fruit roll-ups into a hot goo and then shot them into our veins with tiny sharp bamboo.
Prahlad Jani has a similar claim to fame except he used liquefied gummi bears in his bamboo needles.
But perhaps our source is wrong there. We say that because everything else we’ve seen says he literally hasn’t eaten or drank a single thing in 70 years, this because a likely multi-armed Goddess came down from heaven and blessed him as a boy.
70 years ago in India, Prahlad Jani probably consumed as many Big Macs, Whoppers and Gatorades as the next dirt farmer’s boy. Then one day he stopped. It wasn’t out of sickness or anything – it was because somebody who probably looked like they were supporting cast in Avatar blessed him.
As The Sun puts it:
“He says he was blessed by a goddess at a young age, which gave him special powers.”
Jani was probably pretty bummed when he learned these powers did not include shooting web out of his wrists. We would have been upset too, at least until we raged into a giant green behemoth. And if even that never happened, we would have sat down and found a way to fight crime by never ever eating anything.
Perhaps this could work if our enemies were all super-obese.
Getting back on topic – perhaps it would interest you to know Jani isn’t the only person to claim he doesn’t need nourishment. We’re borrowing form Wikipedia again:
“Jasmuheen (born Ellen Greve) was a prominent advocate of breatharianism in the 1990s. She claimed “I can go for months and months without having anything at all other than a cup of tea. My body runs on a different kind of nourishment.” Interviewers found her house stocked with food; Jasmuheen claimed the food was for her husband. In 1999, she volunteered to be monitored closely by the Australian television program “60 Minutes” for one week without eating to demonstrate her methods.
“Jasmuheen stated that she failed on the first day of the test because the hotel room in which she was confined was located near a busy road, causing stress and pollution that prevented absorption of required nutrients from the air. “I asked for fresh air. Seventy percent of my nutrients come from fresh air. I couldn't even breathe,” she said. The third day the test was moved to a mountainside retreat. After fasting for four days, Dr. Berris Wink, president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, urged her to stop the test.”
…and then three of her followers died trying to emulate her zero calorie diet. She claims they did it wrong and it’s not her fault. Figures, right? They should have tried to absorb more sunlight.
Our main man Jani has been put to similar observational tests. Most recently – these, according to The Sun, were the results:
“During a 15 day stay in a hospital in the city of Ahmedabad, India ? he astounded doctors by not eating, drinking or going to the bathroom. “We still do not know how he survives,? neurologist Sudhir Shah said at the end of the experiment. “It is still a mystery what kind of phenomenon this is.””
To be completely fair you should know Jani claims that although he doesn’t eat typical food – he does consume something. This, again, according to Wikipedia:
“Jani claims a goddess sustains him through amrit [nectar of the Gods] that filters down through a hole in his palate.”
We’re told this amrit tastes considerably like chicken, and that a diet version is probably going to be available in the fall of 2011. It all depends on marketing, really.
Well that certainly sounds better than India’s last soft drink innovation.
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Joe Momma says
I read somewhere that ambrosia the Greek term for nectar of the gods. I guess called amrit in India. Is actually mestural blood.
Bazza Bonzo says
Typical rantings of a secular humanist confronted with something inexplicable. To whit:
If it can’t be proved wrong (even though we KNOW it’s wrong – right!) we’ll just ridicule it incessantly so that anyone who attempts to support it is immediately relinquished to the garbage heap of irrelevancy.
*Yawn* such poor science, such blatanty obvious defensive behaviour, such myopic vision.
True science finds these things fascinating, and finds much more pleasure in seeking an explanation (whether that be exposing a fraud, or opening a new field of research), rather than the myopic and dry humor you invoke in your response.
Rani says
whoppers and big mac in India back 70 yrs ago??? dirt poor farmer?? (how does dirt fit in?). sterotypes sterotypes sterotypes…
geez.. in your prior incarnation as the sterotyper, you probably were laughing at the folks who suggested the world might be round… keep laughing.
whether Jani is true or false remains to be seen. but one thing is true, there’s more to this world than we know now… let’s get off our high-horse know-it-all stance…