Twenty-seven-year-old M.K. Hema Chandran, a juggler by profession, is obsessed with setting records. Six months ago, he lifted gym plates weighing 22.5 kg using his nails. “I grew my nails for seven months and then made a hole in them. I then inserted a nylon rope with which I lifted the plates,” he said. He now holds a record for the heaviest weight lifted using a fingernail.

Last year, Lokesh Jey, CEO of The Sight Media, put out a Facebook post saying that he was recuriting meme engineers. In a week’s time, his inbox was flooded with over 400 resumes. “I received so many meme samples from arcoss India. That’s when I decided to bring all the meme creators together and attempt a record,” he said. The online meme marathon saw over 21,619 memes created in three hours — a record.

Far from being stray instances, Hema Chandran and Jey are part of a growing band of record-setters. In fact, Tamil Nadu is a leader when it comes to records. “It is the leading state in terms of record holders. We receive the most number of applications from there and they make it to the record book too,” said Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, chief editor of the India Book of Records.

He explained by stating that every fifth record is from Tamil Nadu. At an all-India level, every year close to 10,000 record attempts are made and approximately 1,000 make it to the record book.

Vivek Raja, adjudicator and state head (Tamil Nadu and Kerala), India Book of Records, said that in the last two years a lot of youngsters were aggressively attempting to set records in various fields.

For instance, the Centre for Innovation at IIT-Madras organised an event wherein a team of students fabricated 45 manually controlled floor cleaning robots. In March 2017, the Bannari Amman Institute of Technology organised one where 1,023 Android apps were developed in 12 hours. Both were recorded in the book. Several records have been set across Tamil Nadu in Bharatanatyam. Dancers set records for things like the most mudras performed by an individual in the least time.

According to the India Book of Records, the average age of the record holders is between 25 and 30 years. “Nowadays more women are creating records and smashing earlier ones. They comprise 33-37% of all record holders,” said Mr. Raja.

He added that even government organisations were getting creative and attempting to set records. In December 2017, the Handicrafts Marketing and Service Extension Centre, Salem, which falls under the Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, crafted a 107x45x2 cm replica of a ₹1,000 note.

Fake records

Both Mr. Raja and Mr. Chowdhury cautioned people attempting to set records to go through the right channel, and stay away from fake organisations. “On average we receive 10 to 12 complaints every month. It seems there is a dire need of a regulatory body in India to regularize the norms and prevent fake record books,” Mr. Chowdhury said.