Books & Authors GK Questions with Answers – Page 4

Kurien, the mechanical engineer who built the Amul co-operative at Anand in Gujarat and headed the National Dairy Development Board, told his story in I Too Had a Dream, written with Gouri Salvi and published in 2005; his earlier volume of lectures is An Unfinished Dream.

Nilekani, a co-founder of Infosys and the first Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, published Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century in 2008; it argues that India's young population, its cities and its technology can be turned from problems into assets.

Amrita Pritam's Punjabi novel Pinjar, meaning the skeleton, tells the story of Puro, a woman abducted on the eve of Partition, and was filmed in 2003 under the same name; Pritam also wrote the famous Partition poem addressed to Waris Shah and received the Jnanpith Award.

Nastanirh, meaning the broken nest, is Tagore's novella about a lonely wife in a Calcutta household, and Satyajit Ray filmed it in 1964 as Charulata, a film Ray himself named as the one he would change least.

Mario Puzo published The Godfather in 1969, and Francis Ford Coppola filmed it in 1972; Puzo also worked on the screenplay, for which he shared an Academy Award.

Umrao Jaan Ada, published in 1899, is counted among the first novels in Urdu and tells the story of a courtesan of Lucknow; Muzaffar Ali filmed it in 1981 with Rekha in the title role.

Omkara, released in 2006 and set in the politics of western Uttar Pradesh, follows the plot of Othello, with the handkerchief of the play becoming a waistband in the film.

Five Point Someone: What Not to Do at IIT, published in 2004, was Chetan Bhagat's first novel and supplied the story of three engineering students that became 3 Idiots, directed by Rajkumar Hirani in 2009.

Q & A was written by Vikas Swarup, a diplomat, and was adapted by Danny Boyle as Slumdog Millionaire, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture; A. R. Rahman won the awards for Best Original Score and, with Gulzar, for Best Original Song, and Resul Pookutty won for sound…

Premchand's Hindi short story Shatranj Ke Khilari, about two noblemen of Awadh absorbed in chess while their kingdom is annexed, was filmed by Satyajit Ray in 1977, the director's only Hindi feature; Ray also made Sadgati from another Premchand story.

His novel Pather Panchali gave Satyajit Ray the material for his first film, released in 1955, and for Aparajito, the two with Apur Sansar forming the Apu Trilogy.

R. K. Narayan's novel The Guide, published in 1958 and set in his imagined town of Malgudi, won him the Sahitya Akademi Award and was filmed as Guide in 1965 with Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman.

The former actress turned columnist published Mrs Funnybones as her first book and followed it with the fiction of The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad and Pyjamas Are Forgiving.

He wrote the Sangita Ratnakara in the thirteenth century at a Yadava court in the Deccan, and because it describes practice as it stood before the Hindustani and Carnatic systems drew apart, both traditions treat it as authoritative.

The sitar player wrote two books about his own life and art: My Music, My Life, an early introduction to Hindustani music written for readers abroad, and Raga Mala, the autobiography edited by his student George Harrison of the Beatles.

Besides directing, Ray wrote constantly in Bengali and in English: the essays of Our Films, Their Films, the memoir My Years with Apu on the making of Pather Panchali, the childhood recollections of Jakhan Chhoto Chhilam, the Feluda detective stories and the Professor Shonku science fiction.

The lyricist and screenwriter published the collection Tarkash earlier and followed it with Lava, for which the Sahitya Akademi honoured him in Urdu in 2013.

He is among the few figures honoured both by the film world and by the Sahitya Akademi, and the award of 2002 was for Dhuan, a collection of Urdu short stories; his poetry collections include Raat Pashmine Ki and Pluto.

His 2014 memoir runs from a childhood in Uttar Pradesh through the National School of Drama and the Film and Television Institute of India to the parallel cinema of the nineteen seventies.

The book came out in 2014 and was narrated by the actor to the journalist Udayatara Nayar, which is why it is described as an autobiography rather than a biography.