The God of Small Things is a family drama novel written by Indian writer Arundhati Roy. Roy's debut novel, it is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" prevalent in 1960s Kerala, India. The novel explores how small, seemingly insignificant occurrences, decisions and experiences shape people's behavior in deeply significant ways. The novel also explores the lingering effects of casteism in India, lending a culturally-specific critique of British colonialism in India. It won the Booker Prize in 1997.
Pather Panchali is a 1955 Indian Bengali-language drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray in his directoral debut and produced by the Government of West Bengal. It is an adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's 1929 Bengali novel of the same name, and marked Ray's directorial debut. Featuring Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta, Pinaki Sengupta, Chunibala Devi and being the first film in The Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali depicts the childhood travails of the protagonist Apu and his elder sister Durga amidst the harsh village life of their poor family.
Ruskin Bond is an Indian author. His first novel, The Room on the Roof, was published in 1956, and it received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. Bond has authored more than 500 short stories, essays, and novels which includes 69 books for children. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1992 for Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014. He lives with his adopted family in Landour, Mussoorie, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.
Nina Wadia is an English-Indian actress and comedian. She is known for portraying Zainab Masood in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, Aunty Noor in Citizen Khan, Mrs Hussein in the BBC comedy Still Open All Hours and for starring in the BBC Two sketch show Goodness Gracious Me.
Saeed Jaffrey was a British-Indian actor. His career covered film, radio, stage and television roles over six decades and more than 150 British, American, and Indian movies. During the 1980s and 1990s he was considered to be Britain's highest-profile Asian actor, thanks to his leading roles in the movie My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and television series The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Tandoori Nights (1985–1987) and Little Napoleons (1994). He played an instrumental part in bringing together film makers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant and acted in several of their Merchant Ivory Productions films such as The Guru (1969), Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1978), The Courtesans of Bombay (1983) and The Deceivers (1988).
The Far Pavilions is an epic novel of British-Indian history by M. M. Kaye, published in 1978, which tells the story of an English officer during the British Raj. There are many parallels between this novel and Rudyard Kipling's Kim that was published in 1900: the settings, the young English boy raised as a native by an Indian surrogate mother, "the Great Game" as it was played by the British Empire and Imperial Russia. The novel, rooted deeply in the romantic epics of the 19th century, has been hailed as a masterpiece of storytelling. It is based partly on biographical writings by the author's grandfather, as well as her knowledge of and childhood experiences in India. It has sold millions of copies, caused travel agents to create tours that visited the locations in the book, and inspired a television adaptation and a musical play.
Nabil Shaban is a Jordanian-British actor and writer. He co-founded Graeae—a theatre group which promotes disabled performers. He's best known as the recurring villain Sil in Doctor Who.
Waris Hussein is a British-Indian television and film director. At the beginning of his career he was employed by the BBC as its youngest drama director. He directed early episodes of Doctor Who, including the first serial, An Unearthly Child (1963), and later directed the multiple-award-winning Thames Television serial Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978).
Sixth Happiness is a 1997 British drama film directed by Indian director Waris Hussein. It is based on the 1991 autobiography of Firdaus Kanga, entitled Trying to Grow. Kanga played himself in this film about Britain, India, race and sex.
Tabish Khair is an Indian English author and associate professor in the Department of English, University of Aarhus, Denmark. His books include Babu Fictions (2001), The Bus Stopped (2004), which was shortlisted for the Encore Award (UK) and The Thing About Thugs (2010), which has been shortlisted for a number of prizes, including the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Man Asian Literary Prize. His poem Birds of North Europe won first prize in the sixth Poetry Society All India Poetry Competition held in 1995. In 2022, he published a new Sci Fi novel, [The Body by the Shore].
Saawariya (transl. Beloved) is a 2007 Indian Hindi-language romance film produced and directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1848 short story White Nights. The film marked the debut of Ranbir Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor. It was the last film appearance of both Zohra Sehgal and Begum Para before their deaths. Co-produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment, it is the first Bollywood film to receive a North American release by a Hollywood studio and is one of the first Bollywood films to be released on Blu-ray Disc.
Moultrie Rowe Kelsall was a Scottish film and television character actor, who began his career in the industry as a radio director and television producer. He also contributed towards architectural conservation.
Aravind Adiga is an Indian writer and journalist. His debut novel, The White Tiger, won the 2008 Man Booker Prize.
Trying to Grow is a 1991 novel by Firdaus Kanga, published by Bloomsbury. The novel is semi-autobiographical, set in urban India, and is about a young boy growing up with brittle bones.
Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti is a 1991 memoir by Radha Rajagopal Sloss. It chronicles aspects of the long, intimate, and ultimately contentious relationship of the author's family with the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.
Gurcharan Das is an Indian author, who wrote a trilogy based on the classical Indian goals of the ideal life.
Midnight's Children is a 2012 film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel of the same name. The film features an ensemble cast of Satya Bhabha, Shriya Saran, Siddharth, Ronit Roy, Anupam Kher, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Seema Biswas, Shahana Goswami, Samrat Chakrabarti, Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan, Anita Majumdar and Darsheel Safary. With a screenplay by Rushdie and directed by Deepa Mehta, the film began principal photography in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in February 2011 and wrapped in May 2011. Shooting was kept a secret as Mehta feared protests by Islamic fundamentalist groups.
Fitoor is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language musical romantic drama directed by Abhishek Kapoor, produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur, and written by Kapoor and Supratik Sen based on Charles Dickens' 1861 novel Great Expectations. The film features Tabu, Katrina Kaif and Aditya Roy Kapur in lead roles. Filming began in Kashmir in November 2014 and concluded in October 2015.
Notebook is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film produced by Salman Khan under Salman Khan Films and Murad Khetani and Ashwin Varde under Cine1 Studios and directed by Nitin Kakkar. A remake of the 2014 Thai film The Teacher's Diary, it stars debutantes Zaheer Iqbal and Pranutan Bahl, daughter of actor Mohnish Bahl, in the lead roles, and tells the story of a young retired army officer who joins his father's school as a teacher to save it from closure, and falls in love with the previous teacher after reading through her memorabilia left behind in the drawers. The film was released on 29 March 2019 and received mixed response from critics with praises for leads performances.
