Shridhar Chillal, an 82-year-old man from Pune, India, had long held the record for world’s longest fingernails. In one sense, it’s a commendable record that shows a remarkable amount of commitment. In another, it places him in the rarefied category of human sideshow.
Chillal felt a lot of pain with his nails. He’d been growing them for 66 years, or since 1954, when he was 14 and a school teacher reprimanded him for breaking a nail. Perhaps finally over his fear of authority figures dressing him down in a classroom setting, Chillal decided to groom himself. The folks at Guinness World Records documented the process of sawing off a combined 29 feet of fingernail. It was grisly, and the footage will make you scream for a manicure.
In any case, it sounds like Chillal finally got some respite after so much (self-inflicted) discomfort. He told Guinness in 2015 what it feels like to have fossilized keratin hanging from your fingertips: “I am in pain. With every heart beat all five fingers, my wrist, elbow and shoulder are hurting a lot and at the tip of the nail there’s a burning sensation always.”
Now that Chillal’s nails have been sawed off, they’ll go on display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Times Square with all the other freakish ephemera.
- thrillist.com
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