Contemplation of Balasaheb's Death

This position of Bal Thackeray is an obvious inspiration from Fidel Castro   

With the death of Bal Thackeray, there is a blast of comments of the internet and facebook, the pages of newspapers filled with news on him. All this cannot but force me to have some thoughts on such a topic.

My first reaction to the news of his death and the turbulence, and not a surprising reaction is ‘fuck them.’ I’m anything but a fan of Bal Thackeray and the rest of his family, to me they have always seem a bunch of hungry-powered, crazed warmongers with an unruly mob following them. Those reading this, don’t take me for some half baked person, I do have a decent knowledge on the doings of the history of the Thackeray’s.

As much as people glorify Bal Thackeray as a great leader, here’s a fact, Shiv Sena really influence has always been centralized in Mumbai and never managed to spread greatly throughout the rest of Maharashtra. Don’t believe that, then take a look at the current Maharashtra’s government, there is a reason why it is Congress and not Shiv Sena.

Post the 1980s, if one sees through the violent activities guise the Shiv Sena really did not do anything magnificent unless you count the changing of the Bombay to Mumbai.   

Mumbai has and will continue to transcend any form of ‘sons of soil’. I’m from the East Indian Community, and we are more of a Mumbaikar than anybody else, because we have been in Mumbai even before the Portuguese discovered called it Bombay. Then again, all my Gujrati, North Indians, North-East Indians, South Indians are much of a Mumbaikars as I. Mumbai belongs to India and the world. In spite of what any political party thinks Mumbai is a global city, part of something much bigger than itself.

For sensible people, it’s a time to celebrate (unfortunately damn bars, restaurants and shops are closed). There won’t be another person who will have such an iron grip on Mumbai, hopefully ever again.

A few articles now and then, and today quite a few of Muslim support will not convince me of Bal Thackeray’s tolerance. The man advocated, gave his booming voice to the support of 1991-92 riots, and 2006 riots.

"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is (often buried) with their bones,", to quote Shakespeare from his play Julius Caesar, and perhaps one may think I have disregarded all his ‘good deeds for Mumbai’; and there are people who remember a sea of such deeds. But the fact is a lot of his good deeds are bad shit, that’s why I see it, while a large number of people see them as good and there is a sea of people at Dadar.