The Most Trying Hard Man

In India, Stuntman N. Parthasarathy, 39, has covered himself with scorpions, eaten 81 bananas in a half hour, pushed a pea with his nose for three miles. Yet his dream to enter the record books eluded him again last year – insufficient proof of the nine hours he spent squatting against a wall. Still, he tries: “I am not beautiful, not rich, not fully educated. But I wasn’t to be something.”