A list of curious facts

One: Scientists are planning to dust the surface of the oceans with artificial whale poop. The reason: whale faeces help nourish phytoplanktons—which then feed fish. But the number of whales has been diminishing. Hence, a great scarcity of excrement and the need for the fake variety. More interestingly, Goa is key to this experiment:

“In Goa, there is a massive rice production factory whose main waste product is rice husks. This will form the basis of our artificial whale poo experiment, which will take place in the Arabian Sea. Baked and then mixed with nutrients, the husks will float on the ocean surface and we can then study [them] to see if phytoplankton will grow there and replace what whales used to provide.”

Two: In 1825, the Ayah’s Home was set up as a refuge in East London for Indian nannies who had been abandoned by their English employers. They were taken on the long voyage across the sea to care for their children—and often dumped the moment the memsahibs reached ashore. The safehouse served as an employment agency for these women—and provided them shelter but often in exchange for subservience and conversion to Christianity. Radhika Iyengar in Atlas Obscura has more on this forgotten bit of history.

Three: Back in 1983, the now legendary duo Ismail Merchant and James Ivory released an odd “docu drama” titled the ‘Courtesans of Bombay’—capturing life at the kothas but with a fictional gloss. It included performances by Saeed Jaffrey, Zohra Sehgal and Kareem Samar. At the time, a New York Times review called it “73 minutes of sociology, human interest and exotic entertainment.” 

Here’s the really interesting bit: In 2018, the son of one of the tawaifs, Manish Gaekwad, wrote a wonderful essay about growing up in the very same brothel. When he showed the film to his mother, “she was shocked how the filmmakers had cooked up spicy stories about them.” His aunt was the face of the docu-drama—featured prominently in its poster—but she never received any credit (or, we presume, compensation). Below is a clip that shows the skills of these women: