The Red Quiz

It’s Utpal Dutt’s 85th birth anniversary. Few remember that Dutt, a committed leftist, was imprisoned for several months in 1965 for the revolutionary message of his play Kallol . This week’s questions are about jailbirds of many colours and hues.

1 It was first published by Leonard Smithers in 1898 and the author was credited as C.3.3. Which work, and why is it a part of this quiz?

2 The Global Health Council, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and several other prominent global health organisations issued a joint statement of support for which Indian, requesting that he be allowed to travel to receive the Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights in Washington, DC on 29 May 2008?

3 On December 13, 1997, who was briefly detained by the Albuquerque police for racing his Porsche in the desert?

4 For destroying the prints of which film was Sanjay Gandhi jailed in 1979?

5 In 1982, when she was jailed for 18 days on tax evasion charges, Pickle Packers, the world’s largest promotional agency for pickles sent her a pink pickle awarding her the title “Lady in the Prettiest Pickle of The Year.” Identify this hugely popular actress.

6 By what moniker was Robert Franklin Stroud, a lifer originally incarcerated at Leavenworth penitentiary, better known?

7 In 1980, who spent nine day in a Tokyo jail for trying to smuggle marijuana into Japan?

8 When he was a boy, this director’s father had a policeman ‘arrest’ him and keep him in prison for five minutes for behaving badly. This gave him a lifetime fear of jails and the police, often reflected in his films. Name the director?

9 One of the theories for this writer’s pen name is that it is an abbreviated version of Ohio Penitentiary, where he was jailed for embezzlement in 1894. Give me either his real name, or the much better known pen name he used.

10 You could say he made a lot of money from prisons, and cultivated a romantic ‘outlaw’ image. But the only time this performer was jailed was for trying to smuggle in about 700 Dexidrin tablets inside his guitar case in 1965. Name the singer.

Answers

1. Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Goal , written while he was incarcerated. C.3.3 stood for Block C, Landing 3, Cell 3

2. Doctor Binayak Sen. Obviously, we have no real criminals to arrest

3. Bill Gates

4. Kissa Kursi Ka

5. Sophia Loren

6. The Birdman of Alcatraz, also used as the title of a biopic starring Burt Lancaster

7. Paul McCartney of the Beatles

8. Alfred Hitchkock

9. William Sydney Porter, better known as O’Henry.

10. Johny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues

Joy Bhattacharjyais, in this age of televisions pundits and Facebook gurus, simply grateful that facts are not opinions.

Follow Joy on Twitter >@joybhattacharj

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