I am also telling you why I like to share these useless facts and with whom.
Oh, there are several of those. Just as 80% of people in the world (no, that’s not a statistic I am citing, I just made that up based on assumption) love junk food even though it’s completely useless, there’s something deliciously flighty and frivolous about sharing random facts that mean nothing to anyone.
Here’s my list of five favourite facts.
1) Bata is not an Indian brand. It’s a Czech brand headquartered in Switzerland.
I like to share this with people who purportedly love Swadeshi and never strayed from a Bata showroom anytime they, or their family, needed footwear. And yet can’t help the fleeting twinkle in their eyes and pleased chuckle on their lips on learning of its exotic foreign origins.
2) Majnun of Laila-Manjun fame is not actually Majnun. His real name was Qays.
I like to reveal this to unsuspecting romantic fools who’ve been forever enamoured of this tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, but never knew the hero’s real name. The additional piece of knowledge I like to flex on them is that Qays became known as Majnun after he obsessively fell in love with Laila; Majnun in Arabic is a passive participle meaning one possessed by jinns or a madman. What delight to see that slight bewilderment my Arabic language trivia elicits from them!
3) Puppies of the same litter can have multiple fathers. Elephants remain pregnant for up to 22 months.
Fun gets funnier with these fun animal facts. Mama dogs are capable of superfecundation which means they can mate with different daddy dogs, and different sperm from each can fertilise different eggs, leading to the birth of half-siblings at the same time. Elephants are so grand and so are their pregnancies. Twenty-two months! (And some human ladies thought nine months were too long). I like to show this bit of trivia off to random people just to watch their jaws drop. As though only human mamas had superpowers. Next time, read a ‘hmph!’ into that ‘woof’ and a ‘tch tch!’ into that trumpet.
4) Humans are still evolving. One indication is that they can now digest lactose past infancy.
No, that’s not a new trait. It’s been around for thousands of years but wasn’t a common trait among prehistoric humans. This one, again, I like to fling at people who’ll secretly marvel at my scientific knowledge (I read it a few years ago in a newspaper purely by chance) even though they’ll still wear a deadpan, blink-blink Piers Morgan look that says…nothing?
5) Manu Sharma, the epitome of India’s ‘Epstein Class’ and convicted murderer of Jessica Lal, has changed his identity. He is now associated with the company behind Indri, the award-winning single-malt whisky brand. From ignominy to incognito; only the rich could pull it off!
My teenage son broke this nugget of gossip… ahem! I mean, fact. I didn’t believe him at first. But then I fact-checked and verified it, and since then, I’ve been looking for incredulous people to feed this news of Bollywood-style personality reinvention to. This is a relatively new useless fact on the list. So, I am still deciding what kind of people I can share it with.
Many thanks to my beloved WordPress audience for reading my complete list of completely useless facts. 🙂