AFTER GUINNESS NOD TO INDIAN CHILLI, WOMAN TO SET RECORD EATING IT

Spurred by a Guinness World Records nod to the local าghost chilliำ, a woman from Indiaีs northeast hopes to set a new record by eating a massive quantity of the worldีs hottest pepper.

Anandita Dutta Tamuly, a 26-year-old mother, is headed from Assam to London at the invitation of the record-noting institution to see how many Bhut Jolokia peppers, native to the state, she can eat at one sitting.

Tamuly, who hails from a remote village, believes she will have little trouble in beating the previous record, set by South African Anita Crafford, who ate eight jalapenos in one minute in 2002.

Tamuly is a lifelong devotee of the scorching Bhut Jolokia or ghost chilli pepper, even though it is about 100 times as hot as a jalapeno.

าSuch is the hotness of this chilli that it can drive away ghosts and hence the name,ำ said Tamuly, who says she got hooked as a small girl when her mother smeared chilli paste on her tongue to cure an infection.

าI have already created history on Indian television by munching 60 of the chillies in two minutes. I am more than confident of setting a record once I reach London.ำ

She is currently awaiting a British visa to make the trip, which the government of Assam is helping to finance.

The pepper, brought to Guinnessีs attention by a horticulture professor at New Mexico State University, clocks slightly more than one million Scoville units, almost twice as hot as the previous reigning champ, the Red Savina habanero at about 580,000 units.

The Scoville scale, developed by a pharmacist in 1912, is a measure of the ratio of water required to neutralise the pungency of a chilli pepper.