A picture taken by Reuters photographer Rupak De Chowdhuri.
The Reuters caption states:
A Hindu devotee with his neck pierced with a knife attends the "Chadak" ritual at Krishanadevpur village, north of Kolkata April 13, 2012. Hundreds of Hindu devotees attend the ritual, held to worship the Hindu deity of destruction Lord Shiva, on the last day of the Bengali calendar year. The photographer was unable to check the veracity of the action of this devotee.
The options are:
- This guy really does have a large knife sticking through his neck. In which case, he must have been in pretty bad shape whenever he pulled the knife out.
- It's one of those fake magician's prop knives.
I don't have a definitive answer, but given that the knife coming out of his neck is bent at a different angle than the knife going into his neck, I think fake' is the correct answer.
Comments
As noted, the blade emerges at a different angle.
The 'blood' looks surprisingly thick, chunky, and a bit too bright red.
The man's turban extends to the back edge of the knife.
So: fake knife, with the supporting wire looping around under the back edge of his turban where it won't show.
I'm pretty certain it's not just bent around - my money is on it's cut in half, with a C-shaped section of iron bar welded in along the top edge, so it can pass around the neck. Since his turban covers the back of his neck /all the way to the top edge of the blade/ this thinner piece of metal would not be immediately obvious from the back.
Looking at the knife itself also supports this. It's not built to be a machete, and a knife of that shape and size would be unwieldy for daily use.
1)It's true that the blade emerges at a different angle, but that might be due to the curvature of the own knife.
2)The blood and flesh falling over the neck and shoulders is a bit weird (color and consistency). Besides, the neck has vital features (larynx, pharynx, vertebral spine, jugular veins) and it seems really difficult to insert that knife between all of them without injure any of them.
3)The knife on its emerging side is cleaned-up of blood (?).
The blood or whatever it is on his neck and shoulders is just weird looking. It looks more like some sort of a paste. . .which would fit in with the idea of it being a fake knife.