Growing up I never had posters of heroes or heroines adorning my wall. I could never picture myself getting worked into a frenzy for an autograph.

Perhaps Leander Peas would kick me up into storm of action as I am still in awe of what he did to the cause of Indian Tennis or may be A R Rahman, whose autograph I did get but managed to misplace and lose!

I always wanted to meet the ethereal looking Gabriela Sabatini, the grunt queen Monica Seles, the irrepressible John McEnroe and the beautiful Steffi Graf and the handsome hunk Andre Agassi.

Yes of course, I would love to shake hands with the legendary P.T. Usha, Mercy Kuttan, PU Chithra, Milka Singh, Saina Nehwal, Sania Mirza, get a selfie with Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath.

I would love to meet Sugatha Kumari, the Malayalam poet, or S. Radhakrishnan of the famous ‘ Munpe Parakkunna Pakshikkal’ or MT Vasudevan Nair. I always wanted to meet ONV Kurup but now he is no more! Javed Akhtar, I would swoon on meeting or Gulzar, oh! what writing!

I would stand in queue to meet Vandana Shiva, the fire brand eco feminist and Medha Patkar as I am reading more on her now.

Or maybe Tabu that beauty from South Indian Cinema. I ran into a former model who I looked up to while growing up when I was in Mumbai and went on to share my excitement to which, Mehr Jessia replied rather disinterestedly, ‘but that was so long ago!’ She is India’s first super model!

If it were writers I would love to meet Manu Joseph of ‘The illicit happiness of other people’, Anita Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, or Richard Bach for his Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I would love to meet Greta Gaard for her writings on Eco Feminism. And Gurucharan Das for his book, ‘The difficulty of being good’. Yeah, I would love to meet M J Akbar to settle a score, nothing controversial there, but I am keen to meet Piyush Goyal for how he is transforming Indian Railways and perhaps Rajyavardhan Rathore.

But mostly I would spend a fortune to be with my family, my darling daughter, my friends from school or college and a certain friend by far too dear.

The real heroes in our lives are well, in our lives!