This author/writer now writes in Italian instead of English?

The correct answer is A, Salim Ali. Salim Ali, known as the Birdman of India, was the ornithologist whose surveys built the modern study of Indian birds, and The Book of Indian Birds is his best-known work, long used as a field guide. His autobiography is titled The Fall of a Sparrow, and he was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan. Option B is wrong because Jagadish Chandra Bose, who demonstrated that plants respond to stimuli, wrote Response in the Living and Non-Living. Option C is wrong because Birbal Sahni was a palaeobotanist who studied fossil plants and founded the institute that carries his name. Option D is wrong because M S Swaminathan is remembered as the leading figure of India's Green Revolution in agriculture rather than as the author of this book.

The correct answer is A, Sunil Gavaskar. Sunny Days was written by the opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar, whose nickname was Sunny, and it covers his early career including the record-breaking debut series in the West Indies. He was the first batsman to score ten thousand runs in Test cricket, and he also wrote Idols, Runs and Ruins and One Day Wonders, so an examiner may name any of these titles. Option B is wrong because Dilip Vengsarkar, the batsman famous for his centuries at Lord's, did not write it. Option C is wrong because Gundappa Viswanath, Gavaskar's contemporary and brother-in-law, is not its author. Option D is wrong because Ajit Wadekar captained the side that won in the West Indies and England in 1971 but did not write this book.

The correct answer is A, Viswanathan Anand. Mind Master was written by the chess Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand with the writer Susan Ninan, and it sets out the lessons in concentration, preparation and handling defeat that Anand drew from his world championship matches. Anand became India's first Grandmaster in 1988 and was the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna. Option B is wrong because Koneru Humpy, the first Indian woman to take the Grandmaster title, has not written this book. Option C is wrong because Pentala Harikrishna is a leading Indian Grandmaster but not its author. Option D is wrong because Gukesh Dommaraju, who won the world championship in 2024, belongs to a later generation. Match the word master with chess and the option is easy to pick.

The correct answer is B, Aryabhata. The Aryabhatiya is a short Sanskrit work in verse, written by the astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata, which states an accurate approximation for pi, explains the daily rotation of the earth as the cause of the apparent motion of the stars, and gives the correct reason for eclipses. India's first satellite, launched in 1975, was named after him. Option A is wrong because Varahamihira wrote the Brihat Samhita, an encyclopaedic work on astronomy and natural phenomena. Option C is wrong because Brahmagupta wrote the Brahmasphutasiddhanta, which first set out rules for calculating with zero. Option D is wrong because Bhaskara II wrote the Siddhanta Shiromani, whose mathematical section is the famous Lilavati. Learn all four pairs together, as papers often mix them.

The correct answer is C, Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, setting out the theory that species change over generations through natural selection, in which individuals better suited to their surroundings leave more offspring. He followed it with The Descent of Man. Option A is wrong because Gregor Mendel, the monk whose pea plant experiments founded genetics, published his findings as a scientific paper, not as this book. Option B is wrong because Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the earlier and now rejected theory of inheritance of acquired characters. Option D is wrong because Alfred Wallace independently reached a similar idea of natural selection and presented a joint paper with Darwin, but the book itself is Darwin's. This title is asked in the biology chapter as well.