What happens when......

My last blog entry accepted the enormous mistake that I made in a previous post.

57er Ajay (Biloo) Bhatnagar, who lives in Switzerland, was quick to point out another serious error.

I had written that Vinod and Joanne Paes were married in 2004 when both were in their 50s.

That really had Biloo worried - was he a backward child?

My suggestion would have meant that Vinod, who finished his HSc in 1958, was just less than a couple of years old then - and there was Biloo finishing his Senior Cambridge when he was more in the region of 15 or 16 in 1957!

Of course, I was wrong - I should have written "in their 60s" but I thought that maybe I had to give Joanne the benefit of the doubt.

To clear up the ages of the Nayar family - Vinod will be 68, Asha 66, Vijay 64 and Anil 61. Arun would be 43. Vijay was probably the oldest member of our class and he was also probably the first to get married in our batch of boys, me being the second by a few months.

The reason for these gross errors is undoubtedly due to my carelessness. With people writing in from all corners of the globe about my "unauthorised leave of absence", the Nayar story, which I had been researching for a couple of weeks, seemed just about the filler piece to use.

I published without rechecking my notes.

I am not passing the blame. These sorts of errors have crept in several times before. It appears that I now have an extremely agile readership.

I will give my pledge that such mistakes will not get through that easily in future (unless I want to test whether you are sleeping or not).