FUNDAMENTALS
Some of the world’s best loved books have been set in India. This week’s quiz will take you on a biblio journey through India.
CLASSICS SET IN INDIA
1. ‘Singing my days,/ Singing the great achievements of the present/ singing the story, light works of engineers’ starting lines of a poem from ‘Leaves of Grass’ by Walt Whitman. Which literally classic based in India borrowed its title from the poem?
2. ‘Mandala’ tells the story of Maharana Prince Jagat who gets involved with the mysterious Brooke Westley, while he is on a journey to recover the body of his son Jai killed in a border skirmish. Name the Nobel laureate author of this little known novel?
3. HRF Keating created the character of Inspector Ganesh Ghote of Bombay Police without setting foot in India. The first novel where Inspector Ghote appeared was titled ‘Perfect Murder. Why?
4. Javier Moro’s Spanish best seller ‘Passion India’ chronicles the life of a dancer in a Madrid nightclub who ended up marrying Jagajit Singh, the Maharajah of Kapurthala. Name her?
5. Which book narrates the story of Biju, an Indian immigrant in United States and Sai, a girl living in Darjeeling?
6. How do you better know the fictional character Piscine Molitor Patel, who survives a ship wreck and is stranded on a boat in the ocean with a Royal Bengal tiger?
7. The Booker Prize winning novel ‘The White Tiger’ by Arvind Adiga takes its name from the nickname of the protagonist Balram. Why White Tiger?
8. The first book of the Ibis trilogy is set in Calcutta and the banks of the Ganges before the Opium war?
9. India is the name of an illegitimate child of Maximillian Ophuls, a former US ambassador to India. In which book is he a protagonist?
10. In Gregory David Robert’s celebrated novel ‘Shantaram, he was given the Indian name Shantaram by a friend’s mother. He is also known as Lin or Linbaba after the name in the fake passport that he was carrying. What is the name in the passport?
ANYTHING GOES
1. Who is considered as the first ever Pope in the history of the Catholic
Church?(Soulath Mohd, Hyderabad)
2. Formerly, this unit was defined as the mass of a specific object (a platinum alloy cylinder stored in a Paris vault) that represented the mass of one litre of pure water at 0°C. Recently, this unit has been redefined that anchors the value of it to the Planck’s constant. Identify the unit.(Partha Sarkar, Kolkata)
3. It was originally part of the Indian peninsula, but broke away from it around 88 million years ago. Which island country and biodiversity hotspot is this, sharing its name with an animated movie franchise?(Abhijit Basak, Dum Dum)
4. On 27 th January 2020 , Ons Jabeur from Tunisia entered the fourth round at the Australian open 2020 Women’s singles Grand Slamtournament . What was unique about Ms Jabeur reaching the fourth round? (BK Harinath, Mysuru)
5. Which sport of two teams of seven athletes each started out as a fictional game for wizards in the popular "Harry Potter" series authored by J.K.Rowling? (Partha Sarkar, Kolkata)
6. In the 1937 Provincial elections in British India, Muslim League led coalition formed the government in Sindh and North West Frontier Province. Which unlikely party supported the Muslim League in both the provinces? (Vasudev Prakash, Mysuru)
7. What recent first has been recorded by Jennifer Haller , 43 year old from Seattle who works as Operations Manager with a tech startup? (U.N.Murthy, Secunderabad)