Dubbed as “the world’s dirtiest man”, Iran’s Amou Haji has died at the age of 94, just months after he took his first bath in 60 years. He breathed his last on October 23 (Sunday) in the village of Dejgah in Iran’s southern province of Fars, The Guardian reported.
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Why he never took a bath
But, why? Haji has been afraid of water most of his adult life due to which he had not bathed in centuries. Villagers said he had not bathed with soap or water in more than 60 years as he experienced “emotional setbacks in his youth” that led him to refuse to wash.
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What he drank, ate and how he lived
Years of not bathing had left Haji with skin covered in “soot and pus”, Iran’s new agency IRNA said, while his diet had consisted of rotten meat and unsanitary water drunk from an old oil can. He was also fond of smoking, being pictured on at least one occasion puffing on more than one cigarette at once, reported The BBC.
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In 2014, the Tehran Times reported that Haji would eat porcupine, smoke a pipe filled with animal excrement. He lived between a hole in the ground and a brick shack built by concerned neighbours in the village of Dejgah.
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Attempts to bathe him, or offer him clean water to drink, made him sad, the news agency added, he believed that cleanliness would make him ill. But a few months ago, villagers had persuaded him to wash for the first time, IRNA reported.
He became ill shortly afterwards and died on Sunday.
Another man who hasn’t bathed for 30 years
After Haji’s death, the unofficial record could go to an Indian man who also had not bathed for much of his life.
In 2009, the Hindustan Times reported that Kailash “Kalau” Singh, from a village outside the holy city of Varanasi, had not washed for more than 30 years in an attempt to help end “all the problems confronting the nation”.
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He would reject water only to indulge in what he called a “fire bath”. “Every evening as villagers gather, Kalau … lights a bonfire, smokes marijuana and stands on a leg praying to Lord Shiva,” the report said.
Singh was reported to have said: “It’s just like using water to take a bath. Fire bath helps kill all the germs and infections in the body.”
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