Different ways to pass on.

Gunfight at Chhattarpur farmhouse does not sound as romantic as OK Coral at the aptly named Tombstone, Arizona but it was much more thrilling as Ponty Chadha, registered name Gurpreet, and his brother Hardeep shot each other in a quarrel involving property. People in surrounding houses would be forgiven for thinking that these were belated Diwali celebrations as Ponty's guards also joined in the shooting. Delhi will long discuss how Ponty managed to kill his brother in spite of stopping 6 bullets himself. Mr Ponty was a businessman with interests in food processing, paper manufacture, sugar, distilleries, power generation, bottling plants, real estate and film distribution. He must have been an expert at navigating between political parties because he was able to get monopoly contracts from both SP and BSP. He was given sole contracts for supplying midday meals in schools and for selling alcohol in UP. He was about to be awarded a Rs 90 billion contract for supplying nutritional supplements to malnourished children at Anganwadi centers, which provide social services in villages, across the whole of UP. He is rumored to have been worth Rs 500 billion which would be around $9 billion at today's exchange rates. We find it hard to believe why a man owning so many properties worth billions of rupees would risk being killed by his brother for one of them. Why not just give it to him to maintain peace in the family? Maybe that is why we are ordinary folks and not labelled " Ponty " by admiring followers. While Mr Ponty's passage generated a lot of noise Mr Balsaheb Thackeray passed away quietly at the age of 86 years after a prolonged illness. He started life as a journalist and cartoonist and founded the Shiv Sena as a party for supporting Marathi aspirations in Maharashtra. Derided as a rabble-rouser and a Hindu fanatic by the Congress propagandist press he was held in such high esteem that an estimated 5 million people turned out today to pay their respects as his body was being taken for cremation. And this was a man who never held a cabinet post at the center or the state. Which other politician in India today will draw as many people after death? Certainly no one in the Congress. As if to cause no inconvenience he passed away yesterday afternoon when all schools and most offices would have closed and most people would be back home. Today, being Sunday, everything is closed anyway so the masses of crowds are able to march quietly and peacefully along the route of the cortege. India is facing a triple whammy of soaring inflation, extortionate taxes and diving growth rate. As people start to die of hunger may we expect our leaders to show us the way to the next world? Since they are responsible for leading us into this mess surely it is their duty to show us the way out of it. We will follow them to the pearly gates.