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The man who missed the jackpot

Some people are lucky and some are not. Some take a chance and succeed but some don't. Ganesh Shinde, a resident of Kurla, Bombay, must consider himself unlucky. He gave the wrong answer to Amitabh Bachchan on the final question worth Rs ten million in the game show Kaun Banega Crorepati.

The final question was:

Which of the following forts was not built by the European colonial powers in India? A) Fort Dansborg B) Fort Naarden C) Fort Chambray D) Fort Santa Katherina.

The correct answer was Fort Chambray, but Ganesh took a chance and said Fort Dansborg.

Amitabh, in his usual style, asked, "Are you sure?" He even warned him not to take a chance as he would have to go home with only Rs 3,20,000, instead of the Rs 5 million he was winning till then.

"I just don't know why I answered that question. I could have easily walked away with Rs 5 million. But it seems it was not my day," says Shinde, a sales supervisor at Advance Devices Private Limited, a medical equipment company.

Ganesh became the first contestant on KBC to lose Rs 46,80,000

"I could not sleep for first two days as I felt I was a fool to give the wrong answer. I could have easily got my dream flat for Rs 2.5 million. But it seems that it was not in my fate," he told rediff.com.

The shooting for the show was held on February 2 and it was aired on Tuesday. What upset Shinde even more was when a leading Bombay newspaper carried a photograph of him accepting a cheque from Amitabh and saying that he had won Rs 10 million.

"I don't know, why they gave wrong news. Everyone in my neighbourhood started asking my family questions about the money which I did not win," he says.

Shinde was so sick of the questions that he went out of Bombay and told everybody in office not to inform anyone of his whereabouts.

The 30-year-old Shinde is unmarried like Harshvardhan Nawate, the sole jackpot winner on KBC. He has three sisters of whom two are married. He has great respect for his mother, which is why he brought her for the show.

"My mother convinced me to forget about the incident. And luckily, I stopped thinking about it. I am very grateful to her," he said.

"Now, I feel these things happen in life. At least I got a chance to meet Amitabh Bachchan," he says.

He now wants people to stop bothering him.

"My only request to others is to stop asking me and my family the same questions. We are sick of it," he added.

However, he says that the questions for him were little more difficult than that of Nawate.

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