Longing after immortality

''unremitting surveillance'', and even then there is no guarantee of a

mention. Such has been the fate of an Indian youth called Parthasarthy,

who this week made his 85th try by eating two rose bushes. It was a

heroic act, although less hazardous than his next attempt, which is to

eat 625 chillies. His previous efforts have included pushing a mustard

seed backwards with his nose for a quarter of a mile, and swallowing 36

raw eggs. As Guinness point out, however, unique occurrences are not in

themselves records. Exploits like riding in full armour from Edinburgh

to Dumfries, which took Mr Dick Brown 28 hours in the saddle, are judged

purely on their merits. Even then, records invite competition. World

fame could last for only a single edition.

The best route to immortality seems to be giving one's name to

something. The Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh is remembered as a

raincoat, and John McAdam for his tarmac roads. The 7th Earl of Cardigan

lives on as a woolly jumper, and 2nd Earl of Yarborough as a poor hand

of cards. Even Brownie points are said to derive from a superintendent

of the Pullman Car Company.

The most lasting fame probably comes through science. Who would

remember the botanist Leonhard Fuchs without fuchsias, or Anders Dahl

without dahlias? It is honour usually conferred for merit. Mr John

Gutfreund, who arranged a financial deal whereby Sweden wrote off a #16m

Costa Rican debt in return for the establishment of a 210,000-acre

national park, had a new species of wasp named after him. He is now

immortalised in wasp textbooks as Eruga gutfreundi. The deal can be

purely financial, however. At the last World Congress of Herpetology,

potential sponsors were being offered a link with two new varieties of

skink, a kind of Madagascan burrowing lizard. Being remembered as a

reptile may not be the most desirable route to fame, of course, but it

is safer that eating 625 chillies.