Tagging? Don't know but still doing it!

Arnab tagged me on his blog and I am supposed to answer some questions here.

The rules of this game:-
RULE #1: People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by them.

RULE #2: Tag 6 people to do this quiz and they cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by and cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by. Continue this game by sending it to other people.

There's an option of changing the questions and I have changed some. The people whom I have tagged at the end need to answer the questions in their blog and may post a trackback URL as a comment here.

Here go my answers :-

1. If marriage is optional, would you rather stay single and why?(Original Question : If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?)

Yes, single and independent. I won't be answerable to anyone and I won't have any problem to think about pertaining to conjugal life. I like to be a free bird!

2. If you can have a dream to come true, what would it be?

To interview Sourav Ganguly and to date Vidya Balan.

3. Whose butt would you like to kick?

Umm... top secret, there's someone in my professional milieu whose butt I'd love to kick million times... ssshhhhh ;-)

4. What would you do with a billion dollars?

Secure myself with a decent house, car and all the necessities, start a technology company, and then philantrophy.

5. Will you fall in love with your best friend?

Trust me! Its been 26 long years, and no best friend till now! So, that'd never ever happen! And if it would, then I will say it directly!

6. Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone?

Being loved!!

7. How long do you intend to wait for someone you really love?

I have stopped waiting! lolz kiddin' I can wait forever!

8. If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?

Do Nothing! What else? I don't have an option!

9. If you like to act with someone, who will it be? Your gf/bf or an actress/actor?

Vidya Balan

10. What turns you on ?(Original Question :What takes you down the fastest?)

Witty comments, intelligence, naivety, innocence and pristine looks.

11. How would you see yourself in ten years time?

A hot handsome hunk having a beautiful better half alongside! ;-)

12. What’s your greatest fear?

The sky falling down :P lol kiddin' again ;-) Umm.. the fear of rejection is obviously one and the fear of failure is another. Tough competition among them for the 'greatest tag!

13. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?

Good humoured, and good at heart. Lucky to have a friend like Arnab!

14. Do you hate people with alternate sexual orientation? (Original question : Would you rather be single and rich or married but poor?)

Not at all! Afterall they are human beings, unless they are terrorists there's no reason I should hate them!

15. Are you living a life you always would have loved to live?(Original question : What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?)

No! Contentment is the virtue of an ass! I am not one ;-)

16. Would you give all in a relationship?

Everything that needs to be given in order to hold the strings together!

18. Would you forgive and forget no matter how horrible a thing that special someone has done?

I can always forgive but I can never forget! My memory is indelible!

19. Question changed : What's your favourite colour and why?

Green - as it represents nature!

20. List people to tag:

• Munmun

Dada settles scores at Nagpur!

Remember the last time Aussies played at Nagpur?

Dada had to pull out of the match due to a health problem, and everybody accused him for running away from his responsibilities. The media, BCCI and people criticized him so much! It was also taken as the point of DADA's fall!!

Recently, Adam Gilchrist also criticized DADA for it, he was the stand in Captain in that match and he said that when he asked Dravid about Sourav, he didn't get a satisfactory reply! So much had happened at Nagpur!!

Don't you think this was the perfect way to settle all scores with Aussies, media, and BCCI as a whole? DADA's final befitting reply! That's how I take it! And more so when India won the match (The last time they lost it like tame lambs.. without DADA)

A perfect platform. What say guys?

Its almost a year I have stopped watching ODIs. I cant see the Indian team without DADA. I didn't watch a single match in 2005-2006 when DADA was not there.

I have done a couple of things this time.

- I visited the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Day 3, 4 and 5 of the 1st test match(Luckily, DADA was fielding just infront of me near the square leg boundary.). Every time DADA would look towards us, we would chant "DADA DADA" and he'd wave at us at times.

- I took a photograph everytime he came our way (check out my album pics on Orkut)

- I kept as souvenirs the 6/4 board that I had, and also the tickets. In fact it was the last time I'd visited a stadium for watching a test match. Yes, with that I have stopped watching test matches any further. SACHIN may be the GOD of Cricket, but DADA is my Universe, my entire cricketing interest started in 1996 with DADA, and I can't think of cricket without HIM. I always looked up to him as a source of inspiration. He did a lot in shaping my career as well!! I am grateful to him for that for being my role model!!

-I took printout of all articles about DADA, published recently, kept all the paper cuttings

I'm biased, entirely biased, and Cricket means Sourav Ganguly for me. I don't care if Sachin keeps scoring runs, for me, I have also retired from watching 'international cricket'!! Since 1996 I had maintained a diary where I had noted all commendable performances of DADA. I still have that diary with me, and those days will remain in my memory forever!

I still cant forget staying awake at night and watching the Sahara cup, the 4 MOM awards, and the MOS award. I hated Harsha Bhogle initially for criticizing DADA, but later, was elated to find out that he had started eating his own words. DADA always made his criticizers eat their words, he believed in performing with the bat and not saying things outside the ground.

At one time DADA was scoring good runs against Srilanka. He scored 109, 99 (At Nagpur!), 173 in a series (where he was also the MOS). At that time people started calling him "SOU RUN" Ganguly!! he got out at 99 in a match, the same day Greg Blewett of Australia also got out on 99. I still have that special moment written in my diary!! I have followed every innings of DADA since he came in 1996. I started liking cricket because of DADA, I never watched before that, although I might have watched a few WC 96' matches, but the interest really grew around DADA.

Just felt like sharing these with you guys. I am very sad. I am sad that I wont watch DADA any more in the international scene, I cant think of missing his sixes! Those dancing-down-the-track and hitting-over-the-bowler's-head ones.

I still cant forget his 183 at Taunton. I will never ever forget his 239 at Bangalore, and I am happy that I was a part of the crowd when he scored that.

Dada! You will never retire from my heart! Never ever.

The Homecoming

Click here to read Short Stories Online . I have contributed your favorite story -
The Homecoming to ShortStoryBook.net

The following drawing has been contributed by Steve Issac from Bangalore, India. One of my friends who likes reading my posts. He had tried drawing as per the description put up on the first paragraph of the story. Thanks so much Steve! You owe me a treat!!

A Time Slip

And up above the estuaries, was the silver-lined, grey colored plane of Mr. Stephen Aid, sailing through the clouds, as if with its half furtive effort, to avoid suspicion from the Radars.

Mr. Aid, a reknowned person in the US- air force of the late 1970’s, was always busy experimenting with his plane and learning the various skills of defending it from intruders. A workaholic by profession, little could he afford his leisure time to his flying machine. But still from his packed schedule he parceled out a significant amount of time for his dear old airplane.

One day, he took a day off. He set aside all his personal works and concentrated on his machine. Making it dance en plain air, suddenly he enacted a summersault. To his utter disbelief a peculiar and totally unexpected aircraft flew a little above him. With the wings veneered in intricate architecture, the craft could be seen for the following fifteen minutes. The wooden craft was certainly a visual wonder for Mr. Aid and left him bewildered. To see it from a more comfortable position, he tried to fly more near it, and it vanished into thin air quite unprecedented. Mr. Aid quickly landed on a nearby airport.

“Did you notice a typical wooden aircraft, flying above this place an hour ago?” asked Mr. Aid, to the Radar operating officials.

“No Sir! not at all,” they conceded, after looking into the details, being a little suspicious.

Mr. Aid tried to retrieve information about the incident from other airports nearby as well, all with a futile attempt against hopeless odds. They confirmed with a certainty that aircrafts of that kind could be seen only in early 19th century, they didn’t even smell an espionage cooking.

“Are you having more pegs than usual, Mr. Aid?” Asked his boss, facetiously, as he reported the incident to him.

The incident put him in utter dilemma, whether it was a hallucination or a momentary déjà vu; as a matter of fact the aircraft was visible for a considerable amount of time. A lunatic despondency crept into him, that made him handover his resignation.

Still reminiscent of the erratic rendezvous with the wooden aircraft, Mr. Aid, with his personal interest and tenacity started searching it in antique shops, junkyards, old museums. After a period of almost five years he definitely located it in a mortuary of vintage aircrafts.

“Would you please allow me to see it minutely?” He asked the caretaker.

“With pleasure Sir, but please be a little careful as it’s not in use for the past 80 years,” replied the concerned person, sustaining a broad smile on his countenance. A contemplating Mr. Aid found that the showpiece in front of him was an exact replica of what he had seen few years ago.

“When could have this craft flown for the last time?” He asked the attendant encore. After an enquiry with the authorities the person confirmed that it had its ultimate flight in somewhere around 1910.As he went inside the aircraft; there was one more surprise in store for him. Inside a drawer was a diary, which contained the extract:-

May 21, 1907.
What a strange experience, couldn’t really believe it. Today I saw a much modernized ash color aircraft with a silver lining. It flew below me for some time and vanished. It was not visible any longer as I landed.
Richard Harris.

Learning : A sempiternal process ?

One fine day, when I was providing a feedback to one of my friends on his story, a thought crossed my mind. I didn’t pay much attention to the implications of it, and just wrote it par se. The musing was:

“Life is, but, a sempiternal learning process! In its true sense, learning didn't start when you were born, it doesn't stop either, when you die, and it’s just that when you were born it continued from your parents and others in your milieu who'd have lessened the acclivity of their learning curve!”

I thought of finding a justification for it, of course I can attribute this post to the discussions I had, today morning, with Munmun & Satish.

Learning is a vital developmental process, through which an individual acquires knowledge, skills and a plethora of other abstract qualities. A human being can learn only when he can contain in his memory a particular happening or an idea and later apply it in context at the time of need. Knowledge, being a subset of the more generalised superset of the entire process of learning, can be thought of as being slowly acquired when a child starts reasoning and understanding things. Why do I consider learning as sempiternal? There are certain aspects which were not taught by one’s parents, for everything else, there were of course books and myriad instructions to follow. For example, response to stimuli was acquired naturally, not when somebody actually taught us to react in that way. You’ll throw away a very hot pan, or your eye pupil will automatically contract when exposed to bright sunlight. You’ve the ability to flex your muscles or wave your hand laterally. Did that come from your parents? Yes, in a way, as they are the source of your existence. From the genetic point of view, these abilities were embedded in your genes accrued to the process of evolution, and again, the source (of the genes) was the parents.

The ebullience bubbling from within when you see something beautiful, think of an exotic holiday away from the din and bustle of city life, or the thought of an approaching weekend, a festival, a birthday or a marriage, is something quite natural. Nobody taught you that you should react in that way, or did they? Your Mechanical Engineering lab attendant might have helped you at using a vise for the very first time, to clamp a work piece to allow work to be performed on it using other tools, such as saws, but he didn’t reiterate. That’s because you learned at a single instance what you were taught, and that got definitely added to your knowledge base, in your process of learning. When you hear of the bereavement of a very dear relative or a friend, you sit in stupor for a very long time, without responding, ruminating through the good-ol times you spent with the person, you feel nostalgic and truly lost somewhere, these are natural feelings emanating from you, again, you were not taught that at the receipt of such a bad news you are supposed to respond the way. Where do you think those feelings came from? Definitely, from your parents!


The apathy a person normally shows at beggars partly might be construed to the environment he’d grown up. When he’d never seen his parents donating a penny to them, he’d probably act in the same way. On the other hand, he might, as well, go against them, and turn out to be a great philanthropist. The pain and suffering of a person of limited means can only be felt; it is something to be seen and he could, as well, be helped at our own discretion, to somehow mitigate his sufferings, and make his two ends meet. If we leave his development at the suo motu cognizance of NGOs or the Government, we, perhaps, are waiving ourselves off the compunctions that make ourselves humane, the feelings that came to us naturally as a part of the learning process.

When you fall in love with a person, do you really understand how you drown yourself in the viscosity of emotions? Do you realise how much time you spend thinking about him or her, once again it’s natural, in the process of learning, rather, inherited from humankind!

And for the last clause of the issue, I’d like to bastion that on the judgement of a visionary. His vision would transcend quite a few years ahead, from the time of his existence, into that period which would come after he’d have knocked the doors of quietus. Where did that foresight come from? Obviously, from the knowledge acquired by him that far, and applying that to find out what’d happen in future. So, the process of learning in this case surpassed death, it went to somebody else from the person after his death, but especially when he’d already foreseen what’d happen in future, and he’d have possibly suggested ways of combating an impending mayhem that would have vitiated normal living conditions!

As our parents and relative grow old they gradually tend to lose their interest to learn, that’s the time when we become more zealous in that aspect. In a way, it instigates us more to learn, to acquire greater knowledge and apply it appropriately. Hence, the process of learning goes on and on eternally, transcending barriers, generations and time!