THREE-YEAR-OLD Mehul Kumar is lucky to be alive after being speared through the torso with a 3-foot (1 metre) iron rod. The boy, from Jharkand, India, was rushed to the hospital after he impaled himself falling off a terrace and onto a rod last week. The boy was fully conscious when he arrived at the hospital. Doctors removed the rod during a 4-hour operation and said he had lost a lot of blood and suffered some injuries, but "nothing major."