Unusual menu for Saurashtra youth

RAJKOT: Ripley would surely have liked to feature this youth in his `Believe It or Not' book. After all, it is not every day that one hears of someone popping 25 lizards a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mukesh Thakore, 25, native of Modhwada village of Surendranagar district in Saurashtra, known as the ``lizard boy'', has a hair-raising addiction to eat live lizards daily.
Thakore, currently living in Kankavati village, has been consuming lizards for the last 20 years and still he is hale and hearty, and lives a normal life like other people.
Nothing else entices Thakore. When he recently went to nearby Sukhpar village to attend a relative's wedding, he was uncomfortable when offered sweets and other delicacies. He searched for the unusual menu of live lizards and found them near a paan shop.
To the utter horror of those standing around, he simply grabbed them and gulped them down. Even members of the marriage party, who heard about this, ran to the spot to see him eating lizards.
Thakore developed this addiction when he was five years old. While playing, he came across a lizard and having caught hold of it, as any child would, he put it in his mouth. This was his first taste of a lizard. And, since then, he has made it a point to catch hold of lizards and eat them.
Sources said he consumes as many as 20 to 25 lizards daily and during the last 20 years, he has consumed more than 25,000 lizards. And if he fails to get a lizard, he becomes restless.
Local residents express their shock and surprise when they see Thakore catching hold of and consuming lizards, but they have been unable to stop him.