Colorful characters

"Farokh Engineer — On a Strong Wicket,” "Meher Heroyce Moos – Pole star,” states India Today, July 3, 2006 in its special 30th anniversary issue. In a chapter entitled "Lost and Found,” India’s leading newsmagazine presents ‘then’ (in the 1970s and 1980s) and ‘now’ pictures of the two known-to-be-colorful personalities and gives snippets of their achievements.

Farokh Engineer (left) and Meher Heroyce Moos in India Today special issue

Debonair wicketkeeper batsman Engineer, who played 46 Tests and five one-day internationals for India, was the first Indian cricketer to be offered a professional contract to play county cricket in 1966. (Engineer) also succeeded Keith Miller and Dennis Compton as Brylcreem’s poster boy in the 1970s. At 68, silver-haired Engineer has spent almost 40 years in England but says, "I am one million percent Indian at heart,” the magazine notes.

Having landmarked her place in Indian adventure history as the first Indian woman to set foot on the South Pole, Moos, now 61, "intends to extend her roster of countries from its current 165 to 200 by the time she is 75. I can do what a teenager can do, but much slower,” India Today quotes Moos, picturing her smilingly seated, sola topee on head, alongside the bay of Bombay.