Rational Thoughts: Unlimited

With the many recent claims of people living without food and water, it has become very necessary to examine the issues that have been raised, particularly the methods used to verify the claims of these people. There is this man from Kerala who claims to have extracted energy from the sun by staring at it and converting it to the energy needed to keep his bodily processes going on. There is this man from Gujarat claiming to have been blessed by a goddess who pours something down his throat, and so he does not need any food or water. He also claims to have lived for seven decades without these!

These recent reports have provided much needed threads for the Hindutwavadi gang to cling to. Their illusions have recently been dashed by scandal after scandal and they had been in desperate search for new icons and they have been provided by these new idols proclaiming that they can live without food and water. It is not that these claims are new! We have been hearing of these since time immemorial like the stories of ancient sages living on air for thousands of years and such. But we have not seen one till this day! Those who are around today make desperate attempts to hide their age by dyeing their hirsute appendages and wearing wigs to hide their bald patches! We have sterling examples of the contortionist, the pilot turned Baba, the afro wigged Puttaparthi guy and innumerable such examples. The squeaky voiced patent holder for breathing has a few carefully preserved strands of gray in his mane and beard!

Let us take a look at why one cannot live without food or/and convert solar energy to meet the energy requirements of the body. There is no method by which solar energy can be converted into carbohydrate in animals and that is why we are dependent on the solar energy converted into carbohydrate by the plants and organisms which can do this. Those plants that do this must have a pigment that can trap solar energy- i.e., chlorophyl. None of the people who have these claims have any green color and obviously do not have chlorophyll! Even assuming that they have it, they would have to spend all day in the sunlight to convert enough of the energy for the dark hours! How does one store that? The most efficient form for storage of energy is fat which can given an energy of 9 kcals/gram. Assuming a minimum energy need of at least 50 kcals/hour, for the dark hours one needs 600 kilocalories of energy which would need the storage of at least 65 grams of fat between the sunlight and dark hours! There is no known metaboilc process which can convert sunlight into that in any animal!

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