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Nine-Inch Nails Are Nothing to Him
By: By Luke HARDINGThe Guardian --Scripps Howard News Service - Evansville Courier & Press
December 11th 2000 1:10pm
He is scared of the wind, has slept badly for years and has to avoid cows and other moving objects. Now, almost 50 years after deciding to let his fingernails grow, Sridhar Chillal has had enough.
Chillal, 64, a retired photographer, has decided to cut off his fingernails, which have been listed in the Guinness Book of Records for 20 years as the world's longest, in hopes of selling them for around $200,000.
"I'm much older now, so I feel I can't take this inconvenience for much longer," he said. "That's why I'm ready to give up."
Chillal, who lives in Pune, near Bombay, said he has problems sleeping -- "I can't move, can't turn sides, can't pull over the covers" -- because his nails are more than 40 inches long.
"I have so much tension as a result of the worry that my nails are going to break, that with every heartbeat I'm tense," he said.
Worse, the weight on his left hand has given him constant pain in his left wrist, elbow and shoulder.
The nails sprout from a misshapen left hand which is permanently disfigured from the extra weight he has been carrying around.
The longest nail is his thumb nail, measuring an astonishing 4.8 feet in length. Most of the time he keeps his nails in what looks like an oversized golf club bag.
He tries to remain vigilant for cars, motor scooters, cows, small children -- anything which might damage his nails.
Chillal's obsession began at the age of 14, when he read about a Chinese priest whose nails had grown to 22 inches in length. "I was amazed and I decided I would do that, and I could beat that," he recalled.
His family despaired. They predicted that he would end up destitute, but he proved them wrong. He worked as a photographer until his retirement in 1995, making good use of his functioning right hand. Then exhaustion set in.
Now he wants to sell the nails and is asking for at least $200,000 for all five.
"I prefer a museum or a curator to preserve them and I will also get reimbursement for all those years of inconvenience," he said. "I'll miss them. But I'll be happy knowing they are preserved and that my name will carry on."
Has it been worth it?
"What does man not do for fame?" Chillal asked. "He jumps from boats, dives from planes and does stunts on motorcycles. This is also done for fame. Were I to have another life, I would do it again."
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