Reporting this on behalf of akarsh, with due credits to myself for doing the stellarium-ing for 1hr and on the phone line too.
The venue happens to be SIddhapur, Somewhere in Kodagu district of Karnataka. The place in specific happens to be a resort with plenty of '25W' lamps around the place as akarsh reports. Obviously, he wasn't very dark adapted at all.
The stars considered for the NELM 'test' included random picks in the Canes Venatici, UMa and Bootes regions.
Following are the stars akarsh confirmed to be have been able to see.
This apart from numerous other 6+ mag stars that I dint bother logging.
10/10 for this dude's observing provess. I got him doing magntude estimates of random stars and he got within 1/10ths of a magnitude close always !
6.53 Mag needs great skies for sure, but good eye acuity as well. Keep in mind he wasn't dark adapted neither was he in 'dark' as such for there were the annoying lights around him. He and I agreed upon that such a sky with no lights around and with dark adaptation should let you hit the mag7 barrier.
FYI, he 'confirmed' my claim of being able to spot M4 Naked eye (I 'think' I saw it, Yelagiri - Apr 2007)... Only that these skies were a tad better than Yelagiri and akarsh's eyes quite a bit better than mine (atleast so far as the luminance modes go)...
Seems a deserving candidate for a Bortle Class 2. We need to go there, sometime.