An Indian Expedition

Hi Folks, recently prepared an India Quiz for an occasion. Here are some questions from the bunch. The answers are in the comment section. Lets get started.

1) These 7 islands were leased to the British East India Company in 1668 for a sum of £10 per annum. The Hornby Vellard a civil engineering project aimed at uniting all 7 islands into a single island was started in 1708 and all islands were linked by 1838. Name this Indian State Capital located on Salsette Island?

2) This torpedo was first devised by the British Army's Royal Madras Sappers, India, in 1912. It was extensively used in both the World Wars, notably during D-Day, primarily to clear obstacles that would otherwise require them to approach directly, possibly under fire. This torpedo was named after the place where it was first devised. How it is popularly referred as?

3) Agatti, Amini, Kadmat, Kiltan, Chetlat, Bitra, Andrott, Bangaram, Kalpeni, Minicoy & ____________.

4) The Pygmalion Point represents the southernmost point of land in the territory of India. How do we know it as now?

5) Incidentally, the name given to an Indian beach is also a common noun in English for a shore with facilities for docking small boats. Identify the beach?

6) In 1882, a young man from Bengal traveled to this Sea Shore to holiday with his brother. He arrived to find the most beautiful rendezvous of water and land he had ever seen. So bewitched was the youth, he wrote his first play, a masterpiece titled 'Prakritir Parishoota'. The Playwright is the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Identify the sea shore?

7) India's Antarctic Program opened in 1981 & Dr. S. Z. Quasim was the leader of this Expedition. The Indian Expedition team set up two stations in Antarctic, the first one was Dakshin Gangotri. What's the name of the second Indian station in Antarctica?

8) The saga of the heroic freedom struggle is brought alive in a moving Son-et-Lumiere show in this National Memorial. The construction of this building was started in 1896 and it was completed in 1906 with 698 dark rooms. The building was constructed with a tower in its centre connected to the three storeys high seven wings, spreading out like a seven-petal flower. What's this place?

9) Operation Floodlight, conceived by Collector K.R.Rajan, to make everybody between 5 and 60 years in the district literate, was a success in 1990. Identify the district?

10) This park, a World Heritage site, celebrates its centenary in 2005. It's a vast stretch of coarse, tall elephant grass, marshland and dense tropical moist broadleaf forests. It was created to preserve the rare breed “Rhinoceros Unicornis”. Identify place?

11) Canadian author Yann Martel's novel "Life of Pi" won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2002. Its French translation, L'Histoire de Pi, was also chosen in the competition, Le combat des livres. The protagonist Piscine Molitor Patel is a boy from an Indian town. Which Indian Town?

12) A 13th-century monument, now a World Heritage Site. The monument was designed in the form of a huge chariot drawn by seven spirited horses on twelve pairs of exquisitely decorated wheels. The entrance is guarded by two lions, which are shown crushing a war elephant each. Each elephant in turn lies on top a human body. The monument symbolizes the majestic stride of God. The poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote: "here the language of stone surpasses the language of man". Identify the place?

13) The original name for this town was Sohra; it holds the Guinness world record for receiving the maximum amount of rainfall in a single year (1860/61) and in a single month (July 1861). Currently its yearly rainfall average is behind only to Mawsynram in Meghalaya and a Hawaiian Island. How do we know this town better?

14) What was Bangalore's M.G.Road known as before 1947?

15) Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City" was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Kiriyama Prize in 2005. It is Mehta's account of the unfamiliar by lanes of a familiar city. Which city?