thanks for the replies everyone!
actually, upon not receiving signal for 2-3 days, had called a technician to check. after tracing cables for sometime, he came to the conclusion that our dish had been removed. i didn't know where the dish had been. he had traced a disconnected cable lying on the terrace, and connected it to his instrument, and synced it with my STB to check if the cable was from my dish, and the instrument responded to my switching the STB ON & OFF. he then took a new LNB that he had with him, connected it and the cable to an unused dish on the terrace, so for now, thats working for me.
later on, my brother came home, who knew where our dish had been placed, and he pointed me to the location, which is different from where the technician had told our dish had been and was apparently stolen/misplaced. but my brother didn't know which dish out of the several now installed there had been ours, as at the time of installation, ours was the only dish there. am going to call the technician tomorrow and seek a clarification. its a little complicated to describe it all here. will anyway post an update here.
and yes, marking the dish in big letters & numbers with PAINT is very important, as i learnt now!