More than 2.5 million people who came down on the streets of Mumbai like swarms of flies to attend the funeral of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray on November 18 demonstrated a remarkable sense of order throughout the day. The rest of Mumbai’s population, who were under an undeclared but fiercely enforced house arrest, did not have a choice and demonstrated a similar sense of order throughout Sunday.

The people inside and the crowds outside both had a hope each: the death and afterlife of fear.

The day after also brought to fore many sentinels of national interest, who apparently had been waiting for the leader’s death to espouse their much-cherished cause and launch a scathing attack on him. “I know of the maxim De mortuis nil nisi bonum (of the dead speak only good), but I regret I cannot, since I regard the interest of my country above observance of civil proprieties,” wrote press council chief Justice (retired) Markandey Katju in The Hindu. (Read here)

Before you conclude which side I am on, let me tell you, much of that criticism was justified. Thackeray never expected respect even in his lifetime, let alone death. In interviews, he even claimed he just wanted a semblance of fear in his persona —something he got but also something with a shelf life.      

If TV channels showed his funeral for the entire day and presenters even hailed him as a messiah and talked with a lump in their throats, that’s purely out of professional compulsions, rather than political leanings. Twenty-four-hour news channels have to run like that. Thank your stars that we were saved from watching the funeral of Ponty Chadha and his brother!  

As leaders cutting across party lines queued up to pay their last tributes to the departed leader, inside the tiger’s den it was time for contemplation. The real challenge lay before Uddhav and Raj. Everyone in Matoshree as well those outside knew there was no magic in that majestic throne Thackeray sat on. The magic lay burning on the pyre in Shivaji Park.

The warring cousins have a lot of thinking to do – to reinvent the party which was born, brought up and sustained by the larger-than-life patriarch. With that central figure of fear gone, they will have to find a new mainstay.