"Obaid, thank you! There is no better occasion than today to say thank you to Obaid; it was Obaid who opened the world of genetics and molecular biology to me. The first interaction I had with him was when I was doing my Ph. D under the guidance of B.M. Udgaonkar on elementary particle physics theory when he gave a colloquium on genetic code. His lucid talk on how nature's well kept secret of the genetic code was being decoded by clever experiments of geneticists and biochemists got us all at TIFR interested in the code. Later when I got back to TIFR from the post doc position at Murray Gellman's group at Cal Tech in 1968, I felt I was no good in particle physics and was convinced by Anil Sadgopal about the exciting areas in molecular biology and that I should pursue them. When I discussed with Obaid about the possibility my joining molecular biology unit, he not only readily agreed; he got me a chance to spend nearly 3 years at Sydney Brenner's lab at MRC laboratory at Cambridge. One can hardly think of a better place to be in than Sydney's lab in early 1970's if you are interested in genetics of development. Sydney was then furiously generating to near saturation various "unc", "dumpy" and other mutants of the worm; John Sulston was diligently peering down the microscope with Nemarsky optics to work out the cell lineage of the one cell embryo to 1000 cell worm, not to mention the large number of bright American post docs pursuing various aspects of development/neurobiology of the worm with great vigour. Just around that time the mechanism of apoptosis was also being characterised. I was totally blind to the power of genetics to bring clarity to these phenomena but instead pursued genetics and biochemistry of the auto fluorescence of the gut of the worm, the equivalent of eye colour mutants of the fly! But then that is another story. Among the many famous mentors I have had in my pursuit of science in my youth, my sympathies go out to Obaid; he had to put up with me the longest! Thank you Obaid!" --- Padmanabhan Babu