Modasa: India's real-life Rapunzel, Nilanshi Patel, who was recently honoured with Guinness world record, aspires to become a computer engineer.
Patel, a native of Modasa in Aravalli district of North Gujarat, had grown her tresses upto 170.5 cm till Nov 21, 2018. She was first given the Guinness certificate then and she appeared on a TV series of record breaking, La Notte dei Record (The Night of Records) in Italy, which is hosted by Enrico Papi on TV8. She then broke the record of a teen-aged girl from Argentina.
She bettered her own record with an increased hair length of 190 cm (6 ft 2.8 in). The Guinness World Records issued a new certificate to her on September 22, 2019.
Nilanshi said that she has been growing her hair since the age of six and it is her lucky charm. She washes them once in a week and drying takes at least half an hour. She usually wears her hair in a braid, but ties it in a bun to play table tennis. At the age of six, Nilanshi had worst nightmare of her life. "I got my hair cut, a really bad haircut." she said. Since then, from past 12 years, she has not cut them.
Nilanshi, the only child of a teacher couple, Brijesh Patel and Kaminben Patel, in Modasa studies in class 12 science stream and wished to study computer stream in IIT. She said that she got full cooperation from the family and was quite happy with the way she was having her hair.
'I feel like a celebrity when people rush for selfies. I also feel myself a proud Indian,' she said.Her Father Brijesh Patel said that due to technical and age related reasons she could not apply for the the record for the third consecutive time even though after holding the record for two consecutive years. On August 16, 2020 she would enter in to the 19th year whereas this record was for up to the age of 18 years.(UNI)
