Freddie Mercury (L) and David Bowie (R)

HYDERABAD: When rock music legends Freddie Mercury and David Bowie crooned ‘ Under pressure that burns a building down’, almost four decades ago, little did they know that the 80’s chartbuster will find them a place in Telangana’s school textbooks.

Bizarre? Turn to chapter 4 of the biology textbook, prescribed to all Class IX students enrolled in schools affiliated to the SSC board. If the ‘Did You Know’ section is to be believed, Mercury and Bowie were not just scientists, they also made a major breakthrough by inventing desalination! Would Thomas Jefferson be turning in his grave right now? For the uninitiated, it was this American scientist who first decoded the simple desalination process in 1791.

But the 10 writers of the Telangana textbook beg to differ. In fact, leaving no room for doubt, they explain this outstanding invention that Mercury and Bowie arrived at by “removing salt from seawater using a semi-permeable membrane” through a process called desalination.

That the process involves ‘pressurisation’, is perhaps what confused them? Perhaps. But this chapter on ‘Plasma Membrane’ dwells on the subject in detail, explaining how there is plenty of water on Earth, but we cannot use it unless salt is removed from it — all the while giving the rock stars credit for showing us the way.

“It is a factual error, but even if anyone is trying to compare desalination with these pop stars , it is like comparing apples and oranges,” said Anjali Razdan, a biologist, who is currently working as director, education of Kairos School. She stressed the importance of these books being edited carefully so that such “errors can be corrected”. The textbook was examined by four editors before it hit the printing press.

