When curiosity does not kill the cat

Why the banana peel prompts a comical slip? Why zebra alone has black stripes? Why don’t woodpeckers get headaches? Why a toast lands butter-side down by the time it hits the floor? These amusing observations do raise playful curiosity that makes people laugh first and make them think later. And there is no dearth of such cases worth taking note of. The criteria of laughing first and thinking later clicked with Marc Abrahams, who firmly believes that science can be serious and ridiculous at the same time. For cultivating a culture of playful skepticism and attention that blends humor and academic rigor, Marc instituted Ig Nobel Prizes in 1999. ‘Ig Nobel’ is an antinode to the idea that science must always be serious and somber. 

These prizes highlight the absurdities of human endeavors but without mocking the embedded science in it. It celebrates its quirks, its questions and its capacity to illuminate the edges of human understanding. The Ig Nobels bring attention to work that might have otherwise been ignored forever. That is true of the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in Ornithology awarded to Ivan R, Schwab and late Philip May. As early as 1976, May had argued that woodpeckers were nature’s living experiment on head injury prevention. But it took three decades before the value of the headstrongness of woodpeckers – without getting succumbed to brain injury – was accepted as an engineering idea which lay trapped as an evolutionary mystery.  

Following several years of research in the quest for Ig Nobels, science writer Upasana Sarraju has put together a thoughtful and reflective compilation on weird science and scientists for whom the curiosity tugged along to bag the coveted prize, which disproves the proverbial expression curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity of twelve extraordinary scientists is presented as unusual stories in search of science. Scientific achievements having a curious property get the award, both celebrating the enjoyable side of science and enticing people to become interested in science. 

Each prize justifies for being funny and radical at the same time. A 2012 Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to a team of researchers for their study on the dynamics of spilling coffee from a cup as you walk. On the flip side, the team paid attention to walking speeds and the quantity of coffee initially in the cup. However, the interplay between the complex motion of a cup, the biomechanics of walking, and the low-viscosity-liquid dynamics came under scientific scrutiny. One wonders if this research has direct implications but other awards on fluid dynamics and even the viscosity of the fluid determine how the liquids behave under varying conditions.  

The surprisingness of a banana peel may seem frivolous for a scientific inquiry but 2014 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics led to discussions about the design of safer flooring materials, which is particularly important in public spaces like hospitals and shopping centers. In eleven chapters, Sarraju explores strange corners which winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes have selected and curated science that is cool, interesting and real. These inimitable Prizes are windows into the strange, wonderful and sometimes hilarious world of asking questions just because.   

Weird but chaotic, predictable but laughable, discovery is in itself a great thrill. The safest way to transport rhinos is by lifting the animal upside down. It may seem a wild joke but in reality, that is the fact which can hardly be ignored. Even that may be true for transporting even pigs. What does this all mean? It means that the world is full of scientists who are funny, odd and endlessly curious. It also means that scientists are eccentric, mischievous, and deeply weird.  

Written with delightful insights and interests, Sarraju explores what lies beyond the heart of scientific discovery. It explores how a laughable beginning becomes an idea that can change the world. Each award is first understood as an idea before it is developed as a concept for further exploration. In doing so, the author leaves the reader with possible questions for additional insights. For instance, open the smelliest thing in your fridge and reflect does your brain lights up with disgust, hunger or a primal urge to throw it far. Our ability to imagine and seek out more mysterious reality drives us towards an incredible future.

Unruly: The Ig Nobel Prizes 
by Upasana Sarraju
Penguin RandomHouse, New Delhi. 
Extent: 318, Price: Rs. 499.

First published in Deccan Herald on May 31, 2026.

The King who did not win any war but excelled in dancing

Given his creative urge and innovative temperament, Wajid Ali Shah enriched thumri as a style of song, sitar as a musical instrument, and kathak as a dance. Such was his aura in the realm of arts that those who were considered proficient became minnows before him. Even in exile from his beloved Lucknow to far away Calcutta, Wajid Ali Shah used the farewell of a bride from her father's home as a metaphor for his banishment while singing his own creation babul mora naihar chhooto jaye, a timeless classical thumri in raag bhairavi. 

Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was neither a ruler of a huge empire, nor did he rule for a long period of time. The erstwhile ruler of Awadh in Lucknow is embedded in popular imagination as the ill-fated king, an opulence-loving character who lost his throne to the British. Known for his eccentricities, Shah never wielded his sword but painted the canvas of his kingdom with rich colors of music and dance. History often prefers narratives filled with battles and braveries, and that is perhaps the reason the British dethroned the king who pursued arts and aesthetics instead.

It remains a mystery till date why Wajid Ali Shah had his left breast and nipple artistically exposed between the gold borders of his royal dress all the time. Shah’s portrait in the picture gallery near the Husainabad Clock Tower in Lucknow was reportedly kept behind a curtain, because it is said that a British lady had fainted after seeing it. Such eccentricities only contributed to justifying the nefarious designs of the British who didn’t waste time to dethrone him.  

British historian Rosie Llewellyn-Jones constructed the imagery of the king through many facets of his personal and political life in The Last King of India. She wrote that the actual reign of the poet-ruler had lasted only nine years (1847- 56) but the erstwhile ruler spent the last 30 years of his life as a deposed ruler (on pension from the British East India Company) at Garden Reach near Calcutta, ruling a mock-kingdom with 6,000 subjects. Even in exile against all odds, he had continued pursuing his interests in arts and culture.

However, a deep dive into the realities of the 19th century reveals the real persona of the misunderstood king, who was undoubtly less of a king and more of a poet, and an author and a creative person par excellence. Dr Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza, the great grandson of Wajid Ali Shah, challenges colonial narratives and highlights his artistic contributions that positions Awadh's last ruler as a major cultural force. By bringing his literary and poetic contribution into scholarship, Wajid Ali Shah reveals that the king was a multifaceted artist. 

Originally written in Urdu, the 600-page volume has been translated by Dr Talat Fatima, the great-great granddaughter of Wajid Ali Shah, to widen its reach and correct historical misunderstandings. It introduces readers to Shah's lesser-known talents in poetry, drama, and architecture, and restores a neglected voice in rich cultural heritage.

As the book suggests, Wajid Ali Shah excelled in many fields of art and creativity. A teetotaler all his life, he had a fascination for Lord Krishna, and was sometimes referred to as Kanhaiya, which was reflected through his passion for grand theatrical events. Had he been born a century later, Wajid Ali Shah undoubtedly would have found a career in the film world, with the chance to realize, on an epic scale, rahas or dance drama he had directed in Lucknow – some of which lasted for over a month. History has seemingly been unkind to him, not crediting him as one of the most important cultural icon of his day and for the ebullient creativity he represented.

Wajid Ali Shah was born with remarkable creative abilities. He loved writing masanvi (free from rhyming), the longest of which has as many as 48,150 couplets. Amazing! He composed Ishq Nama to express his temporal love at the age of twenty-six and expressed his divine love at the age of sixty-two named Sabatul Quloob. Though written in persian, both of these reflect class. Wajid Ali Khan was a man of strong character and did not allow any woman to serve him unless she was married to him. No surprise, he ended up marrying some 375 women in his life. 

It is a brilliantly told historical account of a creative King who remained woefully mis-understood during his time, but one who comes out as a man of character who lived his life on his own terms.  

Wajid Ali Shah

by Kaukub Quder Sajjad Ali Meerza

Translated by Dr. Talat Fatima

Hachette, New Delhi

Extent: 629 pages. Price: Rs. 1299

First published in raagdelhi.com (The king who did not win any war but knew how to dance)  

Meditation on overcoming odds

Even in the face of hardship, parents rarely hesitate to bestow a meaningful blessing upon their newborn. Cradled with the hope that he would one day reign like a king, Rasangam, in reality, spends his days cycling back and forth to the small grocery shop he manages in order to support his widowed mother, aunt, siblings and cousins.

Unable to pursue his dream of higher education, he often laments his fate. How can he explain the untimely burden of patriarchy thrust upon him?

Rasangam possesses a quiet eloquence, yet, as a soft-spoken man in a female-dominated household, he can never command the respect he yearns for — neither within the confines of his home nor across the village. He struggles against the many forces that shape his life: faith, family and tradition. Even after buying a car and a motorcycle, his social status remains unchanged. What must he do to break all shackles and earn respect? Tamil writer Salma’s new novel, The Binding, is a quiet meditation on overcoming such odds.      

Salma is the pen name of poet, novelist and activist Rajathi, whose courageous voice has become central to contemporary Tamil literature. Her career is marked by several seminal works that have earned both critical acclaim and a devoted readership, particularly within the Muslim community in Tamil Nadu. Now as Rajya Sabha MP, her literary insight is poised to gain a wider political resonance.

Though not fully content with his life, Rasangam finds strength in the deep bonds of his extended family. Mutual care and nurturing sustain the household, yet women continue to occupy a secondary place within the social order. There is little he can do to elevate either their status or his own. Gradually, he feels drawn more deeply towards faith, devoting himself to religious service and undertaking the Haj pilgrimage. Once he returns, Rasangam renounces worldly indulgences in pursuit of the social esteem he has always longed for.

Reading this nuanced novel is like peeling an onion, layer by layer. Rasangam may appear to be the central figure, but the secondary characters enrich the narrative with immense cultural depth. According to translator Janani Kannan, a U.S.-based architect who has won awards for translating Tamil novels and short stories, the structure of the novel resembles the texture of lived experience itself. And is it not, ultimately, the lived experience of growing up with the suffocating constraints of a conservative religious family?

Rasangam’s dutiful son, Imran, fulfils his father’s unrealized dream by going to college. Leaving the village behind, he joins an institution in a sprawling city and initially struggles to adapt to its vibrant and broad-minded atmosphere. Yet, he soon realizes how deeply prejudice against his community runs, and how urgently his society must evolve with changing times. Securing a government job appears to him one credible path toward dignity and acceptance.

As he steps into a more diverse social world, Imran also encounters the growing anxieties surrounding interfaith relationships. Such expressions of love are frequently stifled by political propaganda, raising troubling questions about the true nature of social progress. Imran is disturbed by this contradiction and feels the pain of a society whose progress remains conditional and selective. But the novel also reminds us that perspectives on progress are never absolute; what appears progressive to one may seem regressive to another, depending on time, place and context.

Salma approaches the fraught subject of “love jihad” with remarkable care and restraint. Rather than arriving at definitive conclusions, she presents its many complexities and contradictions. Broad-mindedness and progressive ideals alone, the novel suggests, may prove inadequate within an increasingly polarized political climate. The narrative comes full circle as Salma extends it into the next generation, juxtaposing evolving modern struggles against enduring social prejudices.

The Binding
by Salma
Translated by Janani Kannan
PanMcMillan, New Delhi
Extent: 272, Price: Not mentioned.

First published in The Hindu on May 13, 2026.

Can we eat without devouring the earth?

Is farming the world's greatest cause of environmental destruction? Even as a thought experiment, it may be hard to imagine. With fossil fuel on top of the climate story and anxious fossil fighters claiming curbs on its usage, farming still nowhere features prominently in the climate story. Even if the world weans itself from fossil fuels, it will still find itself slouching toward disaster as the fossil fuel story remains only two-thirds of the climate story. The rest of the climate story is about the food we eat and the farms that produce it, but which is not without frying the world. 

The core issue is the expanding agricultural footprints. Already the size of all of Asia plus all of Europe have been converted into farmland and that is not without a cost – biodiverse habitats destroyed, pristine forests compromised and the nature’ footprints have shrunk. The farming sprawl is thirty times that of the urban sprawl. If current trends unfold, the world farmers will need to convert more area to fill nearly 10 billion human bellies by 2050. That would wipe out more forests and other natural carbon storehouses, our best defenses against climate change. And on top, some millions would still go hungry.

The food system itself is not climate friendly and probably the most destructive. Award-winning journalist Michael Grunwald dives into We Are Eating the Earth to show how the biggest of our dilemmas about feeding the world can be resolved without devouring the planet. Land is our most precious resource, because it has the twin-task of producing much more food and absorbing much more carbon to save us. Crops, like us, are carbon-based life forms that grow on the earth and as Mark Twain said, they’re not making more of it.

Land is the vast reservoir of carbon, holding three times as the atmosphere and four times as much as above-ground vegetation. If the Paris climate summit targets have to be met, the world will need to eliminate three-fourths of food-related emissions by 2050. But soils have not yet been prepared to sequester such emissions, extractive agriculture instead depletes soils. Four Per Thousand global campaign, to increase the carbon content in farm soils by 0.4 percent, can trap 89 percent of agricultural emissions. That’s lot of carbon, at least on paper. 

Grunwald has evidence to argue that every piece of land needs to be valued either as a potential food source or a potential carbon sink. Only by efficiently using the land can ‘eating the land’ remain only an imagination. The book cleverly frames the solution around efficiency: pointing out that the more food we can produce on less land, the more land we can keep in its natural state.  

Quitting fossil fuels can only be part of the solution, the challenge is the need to preserve ecosystems that store carbon.   

Grunwald takes guidance from a brilliant scientist Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton and senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, who began his career as a lawyer to navigate how science and politics influence agricultural interests. Is meat really that bad? Searchinger’s answer boil down to this: ‘It’s land….meat uses too much land, just like ethanol.’ One cow meat is as much as 100 chickens, emitting 50 times more greenhouse gases than coal, But who cares as more animals suffer and die before reaching our plates. 

Food is now as big a climate challenge as oil and coal. We Are Eating the Earth is a warning to the present generation to keep the planet habitable for the next generation. The production of our food harms the environment in more than many ways. While the farms that feed the world might not consume the entire earth, two-fifths of our planet’s land area remains vulnerable. More sobering still, that figure is growing as the global population continues to grow and more people become wealthy enough to eat meat. 

Most of what Grunwald narrates is realistic. Clearly, eating ‘plant rich diets’ is the best opportunity to reduce carbon pollution. Need it be said that only systemic changes can stop frying the planet. Guilt-tripping ordinary people into individual actions may have modest impacts which distract from corporate and government actions with disastrous impacts. We Are Eating the Earth is strongly recommended as one of the most important works on climate this decade. Read the book and decide for yourself what needs to be done! 

Grunwald has recommended four steps: Produce more food per acre; Protect key habitats and keep them off limits to food production; Reduce demand for meat, biofuels, and other land consuming products; Restore unproductive lands to nature. In conclusion, he advocates both systemic change and personal action. Each of us is eating the earth and how we eat matters. 

We Are Eating the Earth 
by Michael Grunwald
Simon&Schuster, New Delhi
Extent: 379, Price: Rs.999.

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine on May 11, 2026.