Pankaj Roy  pronunciation (help·info) (31 May 1928 - 4 February 2001) was an Indian cricketer. A right-handed opening batsman, he is best known for establishing the world record opening partnership of 413 runs, together with Vinoo Mankad, against New Zealand at Chennai. The record stood until 2008. He was honoured with the Padma Shri. His nephew Ambar Roy and son Pranab Roy also played Test cricket for India.

Roy played domestic cricket in India for Bengal cricket team. He scored a century on his first-class debut in 1946-47 and went on to score 33 hundreds, scoring a total of 11868 first class runs at 42.38.

When England toured India in 1951, Roy was selected for the Indian squad and made his Test debut at Delhi. Despite making just 12 in his debut innings he scored 2 centuries in the series. The following summer he toured England and had a contrasting series, making 5 ducks in his 7 innings, including Frank Tyson's debut first class wicket. This tally included a pair at Old Trafford. He would hit five Test centuries for India, with a top score of 173.

Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian novelist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays. Her writings on various social, environmental and political issues have been a subject of major controversy in India.

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to Ranjit Roy, a Bengali Hindu tea planter and Mary Roy, a Malayali Syrian Christian women's rights activist.

She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard da Cunha.

Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and played a village girl in his award-winning movie Massey Sahib. Until made financially secure by the success of her novel The God of Small Things, she worked various jobs, including running aerobics classes at five-star hotels in New Delhi. Roy is a cousin of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy, the head of the leading Indian TV media group NDTV. She lives in New Delhi.

Pankaj Mishra ( पंकज मिश्रा ) born 1969 in Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh (North India), is an Indian essayist and novelist. He is particularly notable for his book Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, a sociological study of small-town India, and his writing for the New York Review of Books.

He graduated with a bachelor's degree in commerce from Allahabad University before earning his Master of Arts degree in English literature at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He was the Visiting Fellow for 2007-2008 at the Department of English, University College London, UK.

In 1992, he moved to Mashobra, a Himalayan village, where he began to contribute literary essays and reviews to The Indian Review of Books, The India Magazine, and the newspaper The Pioneer. His first book was Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995), a travelogue that described the social and cultural changes in India in the new context of globalization. His novel The Romantics (2000), an ironic tale of people longing for fulfillment in cultures other than their own, was published in eleven European languages and won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction. His recent book An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (2004) mixes memoir, history, and philosophy while attempting to explore the Buddha's relevance to contemporary times. Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond (2006), describes Mishra's travels through Kashmir, Bollywood, Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal, and other parts of South and Central Asia.

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar ( pronunciation (help·info); born 24 April 1973) is an Indian cricketer widely considered to be one of the greatest batsmen of all time. He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the first player to score a double century in ODI cricket. In 2002, just 12 years into his career, Wisden ranked him the second greatest Test batsman of all time, behind Donald Bradman, and the second greatest one-day-international (ODI) batsman of all time, behind Viv Richards. Tendulkar was a part of the 2011 Cricket World Cup winning Indian team in the later part of his career, his first such win in six World Cup appearances for India. He is currently nominated for receiving the Bharat Ratna award.

Sourav Chandidas Ganguly ( pronunciation (help·info); born 8 July 1972) is a former Indian cricketer, and captain of the Indian national team. Born into an affluent family, Ganguly was introduced into the world of cricket by his elder brother Snehasish. He is regarded as one of India's most successful captains in modern times. He started his career by playing in state and school teams. Currently, he is the 5th highest run scorer in One Day Internationals (ODIs) and was the 3rd person in history to cross the 10,000 run landmark, after Sachin Tendulkar and Inzamam Ul Haq. Wisden ranked him the sixth greatest one day international batsman of all time, next to Viv Richards, Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Dean Jones and Michael Bevan.

After a series of playing in different Indian domestic tournaments such as the Ranji and Duleep trophies, Ganguly got his big-break while playing for India on their tour of England. He scored 131 runs and cemented his place in the Indian team. Ganguly's place in the team was assured after successful performances in series against Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Australia, winning the Man of the Match awards. In the 1999 Cricket World Cup, he was involved in a partnership of 318 runs with Rahul Dravid, which remains the highest overall partnership score in the World Cup tournament history.