More role modeling

Seeing the enthusiastic response I got to my first blog on role models, I think I should write more about the subject. I now realize that 'role model' might have been a very strong term, so I'll qualify it as 'influencer' meaning a person or persons who influenced me a great deal.

Obviously, after my parents, my brother has been a big influence on me. He was my first maths and science tutor, my first cricket coach, my first 'how to tackle bullies' instructor, and being fourteen years older than me was my guru for practically everything (except maybe languages, social studies and music). He introduced me to the world of English literature, (read novels) and Old Hindi film music. He gave me my initial goals in life - first to be a participant in many activities, then to enter SJIHS, and then to prepare for the IITs. Ofcourse, not all of those goals materialized and for that no one is to blame but me. The biggest lesson I learnt from him though is that raw talent is nothing without the effort to back it up. That has been the most important lesson in life. Just a pity that I learnt it very late.

The next person I want to credit is my sister-in-law. For a single 1/2 hour session where she taught me the intricacies of C pointers. That lesson is with me even today - and was the single thing that helped me learn pointers - her lesson helped me more than many reads of Kanetkar's "Pointers in C", giving me such a strong basis in pointers that I lost all fear of it :)

Whew! Looks like I wrote quite a bit. And the smell of my mom's cooking is wafting through the air, restricting my vocabulary to food-related words. So, I'll stop here. Do cook up (oops! send in) your comments.

I'll write about my other role models (influences) in the next posts. _That_ should be interesting...