1. His late father N K P Salve was once president of which sporting body?
A. Indian Olympic Association.
B. Board of Control for Cricket in India.
C. Boxing Federation of India.
x
ANSWER B.
N K P Salve was BCCI President from 1982 to 1985. During his tenure, India won the cricket World Cup for the first time and also won the right to host the 1987 World Cup, events that forever changed cricket in India.
Salve Senior was also a minister in the Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao ministries.
2. He dreams of teaching law at Cambridge one day. Which university did Harish Salve graduate from?
A. University of Bombay.
B. University of Cambridge.
C. Nagpur University.
x
ANSWER C.
One of India's finest lawyers graduated from Nagpur University, now called Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University. He wanted to be a CA and the story goes that when the legendary Nani Palkhivala saw the 20 year old's note on a business matter, he suggested Harish become a lawyer.
Salve has a CA degree in addition, of course, to his law degree, which is why he is the go-to legal mind on complicated corporate matters.
3. Like Soli Sorabjee, in whose chambers he worked from 1980 to 1986, he loves his music. What instrument does he play with rare felicity?
A. The Piano.
B. The Harmonium.
C. The Tabla.
x
ANSWER A.
Salve has been photographed at the piano and usually winds down after a hectic day in court playing some of his favourite pieces.
Like Soli Sorabjee, he loves his jazz, espcially the Grammy-winning Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba.
4. His wife Meenakshi is an artist. What does she specialise in?
A. Portraits.
B. Landscapes.
C. Stained glass design
x
ANSWER C.
Meenakshi Salve is an accomplished stained glass designer, whose work can reportedly be found all over the Salves' stately home in New Delhi's Vasant Vihar area.
5. His paternal aunt was a 'godwoman'. Her name:
A. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi.
B. Shri Mataji Indira Devi.
C. Shri Mataji Karuna Devi.
x
ANSWER A.
Nirmala Salve, N K P Salve's younger sister, married C P Srivastava, a civil servant who served as then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's private secretary. Secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization (1974 to 1989), Srivastava was later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
His book Lal Bahadur Shastri: A Life Of Truth In Politics offers rare insights on the late prime minister.
In 1970, Nirmala Srivastava said she 'witnessed the rising of the Primordial Kundalini' and as Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi established the Sahaja Yoga movement, which she headed till her death in 2011.
6. A couple of years ago, his daughters Sakshi and Saaniya convinced their dad to do what?
A. Give up smoking.
B. Lose weight.
C. Stop drinking.
x
ANSWER B.
Salve lost 13 kilos in 2015, and has likely lost more avoirdupois since.
He exercises daily -- India Today Television filmed the lawyer on the treadmill just before his appearance at the International Court of Justice on May 15 -- and was quoted in Indu Bhan's book Legal Eagles that 'one must tell one's body that you love it the most and give it one hour of your time every day.'
7. In 2015, the Modi government conferred upon him:
A. The Padma Shri.
B. The Padma Bhushan.
C. The Padma Vibhushan.
x
ANSWER B.
Among the others who were awarded the Padma Bhushan along with him that year were do-gooders-like-none-other Bill and Melinda Gates, the journalists Rajat Sharma and Swapan Dasgupta, filmmaker Jahnu Barua and mathematician Manjul Bhargava, who has also won the Fields Medal.
8. 'I owe a lot to the genius. He has been my idol,' Harish Salve was quoted as saying of which famous lawyer:
A. Fali Nariman.
B. Soli Sorabjee.
C. Nani Palkhivala.
x
ANSWER C.
'From him I learnt that genius is a lot of hard work... he opened up a whole new dimension of the world to me,' Salve recalled about
Nani Palkhivala in
Legal Eagles.
9. His first legal job involved carrying his father's files to the income-tax tribunal where N K P Salve was to argue the taxation case for which famous actor?
A. Rajendra Kumar.
B. Manoj Kumar.
C. Dilip Kumar.
x
ANSWER C.
The case was Income Tax Officer versus Dilip Kumar alias Yusuf Khan, and Harish, who was about to turn 20 on June 22, 1975, was transfixed by the thespian's aura as Yusufsaab discussed the nitty-gritty of the case with N K P Salve at a suite in the then Oberoi Sheraton hotel, Bombay.
10. Harish Salve's famiy is testimony to India's diversity. Guess which religion he and his wife practise:
A. Hindu-Hindu.
B. Christian-Hindu.
C. Hindu-Sikh.
x
ANSWER B.
'I'm a Christian married to a Hindu, my mother is Hindu and my son-in-law is Muslim,' Harish Salve told Shekhar Gupta on NDTV's Walk The Talk programme.
Interestingly, when Gupta asked Salve, 'And your aunt was a baptised Christian, a famous God woman and everybody thought she's a Hindu, Nirmala,' Salve revealed about Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi: 'She wasn't, she was married to a Hindu and we have grown up with very liberal secularism at our home. If I have to go to church I don't force my wife to come to church.'