Debanjan Chakrabarti, 37, heads the Intercultural Dialogue Programme of the British Council in India. He spends much of his spare time day-dreaming about playing cricket for India or any XI that would have him. The highlight of his long career is a brisk, run-a-ball 2 he scored at Eden Gardens in 2007, turning up for the British Council against the Calcutta Sports Journalists’ Club.

At the British Council, Debanjan has the additional responsibility of heading the British Council’s Project English in East India.

He was awarded a Felix Scholarship from India for his doctoral studies in the UK where he completed his thesis on Graham Greene’s journalism and its impact on his fiction from the University of Reading. In India, Debanjan obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Jadavpur University, Calcutta. He was a journalist and an academic before and in-between working for the not-for-profit sector.

Debanjan is a very keen tennis and cricket player, and has an amateur interest in photography, films, cooking and whisky and likes outrageous ideas.