Historic hysterics

RECORDS: Care to break a 24-hour tree planting record? Or, still crazier, a mass drumming record? Try it.

"Records are meant to be broken." So shrugged Brian Lara on TV when Matthew Hayden broke his world record of scoring the most runs in a test match. Of course, Lara lost no time in breaking Hayden's record again shortly after "" keen as he was to keep it.

But Isha Foundation, a Coimbatore-based NGO, made a bid yesterday to enter the Guinness Book of Records with a record it wants broken as soon as possible: about 2.2 lakh volunteers will plant 7,00,000 saplings in Tamil Nadu in a single day.

"It makes me sad," says S V Vasudev, founder of Isha Foundation, "that there hasn't been an attempt to plant more trees by people around the world."

According to him, the past record for the most trees planted in 24 hours is 2,54,464 "" by a team of no more than 300 people (without the aid of Nandorlone or any other performance steroid, that's quite a frenzied person-to-sapling ratio).

This feat was achieved by denizens of Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu last year after the tsunami. Other mass-plantations include the effort of The Tree Council in London, which planted over a lakh trees in the UK.

Meanwhile, there are other Guinness records being targeted in India. The Meghalaya Tourism Board is attempting to go into history with an ensemble of 8,000 drummers performing at the state tourism festival in Shillong later this month.

The previous record of this kind was set in Hong Kong, with 5,700 drummers playing together. The drummers will perform in three groups to an orchestrated beat for over five minutes "" and an adjudicator from Guinness would be present to witness the attempt.

Says Christina Colney, secretary, Meghalaya Tourism Board, "The basic idea was to invite people and have fun at the festival "" and if in the process a world record is made, then it's even better."

While Vasudev hopes that Isha's effort will boost the cause of competitive greenery "" "People should realise that planting a tree doesn't take too much effort and is beneficial for each one of us" "" Colney is just looking at making Meghalaya an attractive tourist spot through the publicity that could get drummed up "" literally. Just make sure there are no Nandorlone testers snooping around, that's all.