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Winners of the '10 things before I die' contest!
On November 12, we launched a contest asking readers to tell us the 10 things they would do if they had only three years to live. The contest closed on November 23 and now, after much debating over the many entries we received, we've managed to pick out the 10 best ones deserving of prizes!
So without further ado, we bring you the winners of the '10 things before I die' contest, each of whom will be intimated by e-mail as to how they can claim their prizes!
In first place, we have Saju Sadanand, who wins a Rs 3,000 gift voucher from Rediff Books -- the online book store with over 3.5 million books, 40,000+ authors and 500+ categories. Here is his entry:
The 10 things I will do before I die are:
1. Take a loan from SBI.
2. Take a loan from Citibank.
3. Take a loan from Axis Bank.
4. Take a loan from Punjab National Bank.
5. Take a loan from Union Bank of India.
6. Take a loan from ICICI.
7. Take a loan from HDFC.
8. Spend some money on booze.
9. Spend the rest of the money on women.
10. Pray for the world to end, or else I will be in a soup!
Terms and conditions:
In second place
1. Have a pleasant weekend at Rashtrapati Bhavan with the President.
2. Convey my feelings to my loved one, of how much I love her (I have been a silent lover for the past 5 years, no hope as of now...).
3. Roam around in London with Katrina Kaif in an autorickshaw.
4. Steal a Harvard MBA degree.
5. Buy a jet fighter and with Bin Laden next to me, show him how his plan was executed on the twin towers.
6. Make Raj Thackeray sing the national anthem 100 times in a day.
7. Buy BMWs in bulk and run a taxi service.
8. Set up a state of the art library in all capitals for Civil Service aspirants.
9. Become a judge on a reality show, where Adnan Sami, Himesh, Pankaj, Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan compete for a title.
10. Show Bill Gates how his company's software is used across the world in pirated versions.
Terms and conditions:
In third place
And rounding up the top three, we have Joseph Cardoza, who wins a voucher worth Rs 1,000. But read on, we also have seven consolation prizes to give away!
1. Ask Rakhi Sawant to teach the politicians how to talk and ask Govinda to teach them how to dress up.
2. Write a new Constitutional law to wipe out all the political parties and have just three major parties, like secular, non-secular and communist.
3. Make it compulsory for all the devotional houses such as Tirupati etc to gift one house on each day to the poor with no houses.
4. Whip the government officials on their backside for not doing their work faster and failing to do their duties.
5. Award myself a Nobel Prize -- if Obama can get one, I should be given one too!
6. Make it compulsory for all companies to let individuals go on holiday for one month in one year -- this will also drive the economy. Or reduce the working hours to 6 hours instead of 8 working hours.
7. Recycle the Fiat Padmini taxis into toilet dustbins or drainage cover lids.
8. Plead to citizens of India to keep the country clean and green -- no littering, no spitting.
9. Free education and medication for all, especially the girl child.
10. Go on an adventure, sightseeing around the globe.
Terms and conditions:
Consolation prizes
The following seven entries win a Rs 500 book voucher each and are presented in no particular order:
B Anupkumar, 36, from Chennai:
1. Say YES to all telemarketing calls offering credit cards and loans. Grab them all.
2. Go around the world -- cover a decent part of this trip on hot air balloons.
3. Live in the Amazon Forests for a while.
4. Do para-jumping from the North Pole.
5. Call Ekta Kapoor and all other saas-bahu serial makers and tell them that their serials are evil. If they don't stop airing them, keep them all soaked in glycerine till they agree.
6. Get copies of all those half-baked philosophical books that claim to probe the highly childish question 'Why am I here' and burn them all. Distribute the writings of Wodehouse and Douglas Adams to all the people free of cost. This combined with Point 4 above would make the world I leave behind a great place to live.
7. Ask Bush if he really was THAT STUPID or it was all a publicity gimmick.
8. Join the Osho community.
9. Open a sex museum like the one in Amsterdam in India. Call the leaders of various senas for the inauguration.
10. Trek to Everest. Say bye to the world and do a free fall from the top.
Terms and conditions:
'Make gymming compulsory for politicians!'
Harold D'Costa, 36, from Pune:
1. Teach spirituality to Mulayam and Amar Singh.
2. Create bonding between Sonia and Mayawati.
3. Make Raj CM of Bihar.
4. Be a mentor to Lalu Prasad.
5. Find out the wealth amassed by all MPs and MLAs and hand it over to all Indians staying below the poverty line.
6. Learn the art of handling women from Dr Manmohan Singh.
7. Go shopping with Jayalalitha.
8. Teach every politician to operate and use a computer.
9. Start a degree programme on 'How to be successful in Politics' and make Sharad Pawar the dean.
10. Make gymming compulsory for all politicians.
Terms and conditions:
'Throw an open challenge to Michael Phelps'
Deepak Grover, 32, from new Delhi:
1. Break this news to all AIDS patients and party with them.
2. Take all of them to the offices of the Indian Government's Panchvarshiya Yojna and laugh on their faces.
3. Throw an open challenge to Michael Phelps to beat me in the swimming competition of the 2016 Olympics.
4. Buy a house next to Madonna in Beverly Hills on mortgage at a high interest rate
5. Create aliases of the Queen and the Pope on Facebook and send messages to the MLAs of the Samajwadi Party and invite them to dinner.
6. Buy one-way tickets to Paris, and burn my passport in front of the Eiffel Tower. Then try to contact the French prime minister and see what happens.
7. Repeat the above for other Schengen visa member countries.
8. Sachin Tendulkar will have gracefully retired by then, after scoring 100 international centuries. Tease Ricky Ponting to equal the record!
9. Hold an auction of my used tooth brushes and invite the whole Bollywood film fraternity.
10. Request the ICC to award honorary world cups to South Africa, New Zealand and England, citing special circumstances.
Terms and conditions:
'Obey my wife!'
Sandip Dey, 32:
1. Watch India win the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
2. Weep uncontrollably at my best friend's wedding.
3. Slam Chetan Bhagat for his next novel -- 4 paragraphs in a day: What you've got do at an investment bank.
4. Sing a song for my father-in-law.
5. Take a snap of my next door gym --the great institute I never made it to.
6. Learn to drive a bus.
7. Feature as an extra in the next James Cameron sci-fi.
8. Obey my wife.
9. Declare a war against pigs!
10. Wait for 2012.
Terms and conditions:
'Attend a Victoria's Secret fashion show'
Ankit Bhatla, 20, from Guwahati:
1. Attend a Victoria's Secret fashion show.
2. Go to Las Vegas with my friends and have a night out like in the movie Hangover.
3. Travel to the International Space Station and have a space walk.
4. Propose to the girl I like in the Jules Verne Restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower.
5. Become the Lok Sabha Speaker and fire all the MPs who create a ruckus in the house.
6. Become a professor at IIT Guwahati for one semester.
7. Become part of an NGO and raise awareness on the cleanliness of our cities.
8. Take my parents on a tour of East India.
9. Apologise to all those whom I may have hurt, on national TV.
10.Go on a date with Kareena Kapoor.
Terms and conditions:
'Make Shahrukh Khan dance at my birthday party!'
1. Make Raj Thackeray my student and lecture him all day in English and Hindi.
2. Go over to my boss and give him a piece of my mind before quitting.
3. Make Shahrukh Khan dance at my birthday party.
4. Go to the moon and find out if the US flag is really there or not?
5. Fly in a supersonic fighter plane.
6. Be a hero in a Bollywood commercial movie with 10 heroines.
7. Tell Sachin Tendulkar to continue playing for 10 years after I am dead.
8. Beg Sania Mirza to win a title before I die.
9. Sing and dance in front of a huge crowd and make them clap continuously.
10. Last but not least, kill all terrorists and those responsible for them.
Terms and conditions:
'Run haphazardly through a street full of traffic!'
And finally, we have Seetharaman Kalia Murthy, 32, from Bangalore:
1. Slap the people who always irritated me.
2. Express my love to somebody I did not have the guts to in my past.
3. Go on a tour to Europe like in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.
4. Enter a reality show and shout that reality shows are fake to the viewers.
5. Conduct a programme on FM radio, wherein I can give away all the hidden secrets I know about others to the whole world.
6. Walk into my office with dirty clothes on.
7. Run haphazardly through a street full of traffic.
8. Give a piece of my mind to the traffic policemen who are corrupt and expect people to pay whenever they stop them.
9. Make Rahul Gandhi adopt me.
10. Pull out all the students attending classes and make them enjoy life and nature.
Terms and conditions: