Brother act

A few weeks ago when they broadcast Pramod Mahajan’s interview for the first time I felt that he was among a few professional politicians we have in the country. He may have been, or still is, a “wheeler dealer”, but I think he is far better than people like Laloo, Mulayam or Modi, and deservedly he was being touted as a future prime minister. His shooting was both shocking, and disturbing.

We were randomly surfing the channels and in between I kept reading this caption: Brother’s bullet, brother’s chest. I thought it was may be one of those sensational news titles the Hindi channels often resort to. But then it was on every news channel. It took a while to absorb that they were talking about Pramod Mahajan, and he had been shot, from a very close range, by his own younger brother.

This brother got support from Pramod Mahajan at every step of his life, and I think eventually he got so used to brotherly spoon-feeding that he couldn’t digest his brother no longer eager to help him. The biggest irony is that the license for the pistol used in the brutal attack too was obtained with Pramod Mahajan’s recommendation. Going by what we know so far (well, there could be many skeletons in the family’s closet) the younger brother comes out to be a good-for-nothing person who always sought support from his elder brother, and he did get support for as long as it was logical. The puzzling thing is, an alive brother is always better than a dead brother. A mean person would never kill a person he or she can derive mileage from now or in future. There might be some deeper conspiracy here.

Whenever he was offered security Pramod Mahajan always refused it. He used to say only someone close to him could harm him, and nobody could save him from such a person. Prophetic.