A book of bizarre facts and phenomenon offers the reader a combination of chills, spills and sometimes, predictable thrills

Ashok Malik was born in 1969, and is a news columnist with 'an eye for the strange, extraordinary and downright bizarre.' He can be termed a victim of Synonymia, the rhetorical device that compels one to use several synonyms together to amplify something. But, moving on, as Malik's 'journalistic life' gives him 'ample opportunity to identify and record such phenomena,' he has done what a large number of journalists like to dou00a0-- try and write a book. According to the jacket of the manuscript in question, Malik has no plans to write another. This last fact makes it mildly easier to forgive him this one.

There are a few interesting pages, like those on the disease Kuru, related to Mad Cow Disease, that used to affect cannibals of Papua New Guinea after they ate human brain tissue. Or, the possibility that nylon was named after New York and London, the most important urban locales in the West when the material was invented. Or, the possibility of Santa Claus's clothes being the result of a modern marketing gimmick.

Some of the information doesn't really count as bizarre at all. For instance, is the world's most disturbed grave really Jim Morrison's in Paris? This writer happened to stop by it once, at the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise, and had trouble locating it because it was so nondescript. Other pages simply reiterate what many of us first heard back in high schoolu00a0-- the frightening Bermuda Triangle, King Tut's awful curse, the asthma fish cure administered in Hyderabad, and Idi Amin's alleged fondness for the hearts of dead rivals. So much of this is now commonplace, is it not?

The publishers have decided to label this a 'definite collector's item for all things odd and inexplicable'. Paying Rs 450 for some interesting facts, a few rare photographs, and a large amount of fluff? That's what we find inexplicable. Bizarrre, even.

Book of the Bizarrre, Ashok Malik, Roli Books, 144 pages, Rs 450.

The bizarrely honourable mentions
1: The world's strangest disease, Kuru, is found among the Fore tribals of Papua New Guinea. It is passed on by human brain tissue. (Page 13)
2: On November 18, 1978, one man induced 914 people (276 of them children) tou00a0 commit suicide. Nobody will ever know precisely what happened. (Page 33)
3: A plane flew into a Manhattan skyscraper long before 9/11. On July 28, 1945, fog lead to an Army B-25 bomber flying into the Empire State Building. 14 people died. (Page 57)
4: By the mid-twentieth century, the Nawab of Junagadh, Mahabat Khan Rasul Khan, was the world's ultimate dog lover. He had 800 canines, each with a room, telephone and personal attendant. (Page 71)
5: Five brothers of the Sullivan family of Iowa, aged between 20 and 28, were killed on a single day, in a single action, during World War II. (Page 119)

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