Waging war against your flesh and blood (last of three parts)
After pumping seven shots into his elder brother Ponty’s legs, abdomen, back and chest, Hardeep immediately rushed towards the unlocked gate.
As he was about to enter, two of Ponty’s police escorts cut him down with a hail of gunfire. As one media account described the fatal shots that hit him said, “a slug that entered through Hardeep’s back tore a track through his lungs, filling them with blood, before exiting briefly through his right armpit and then boring clean through his arm.” Although severely wounded, Hardeep managed to crawl and take shelter in a guardhouse by the gate, where he died.
When security escorts found Ponty bloodied and slumped on the pavement, he was barely breathing. They then immediately rushed him to the hospital. According to the crime report, the 30- to 40-bullet exchange left Hardeep dead on the spot and one guard injured. Ponty, with six bullets in his chest, abdomen and limbs, died on the way to the hospital.
Sibling rivalry can devastate a business
Sibling rivalry is a term most often associated with children who constantly struggle for their parents’ attention. What can cause real conflict is when the rivalry spills over into the business, impairs it and effectively damages family relationships. In the case of the Chadha brothers, the rivalry between siblings combined two different forms: emotional and strategic.
The Biblical story of the prodigal son is an example of emotional rivalry. Who will receive the blessing from the parent? Who is the favorite? Who received the most?
In an article about sibling rivalry penned by Dean R. Fowler, he observed that “for many family members, the entrepreneurial parent who worked day and night and was emotionally absent from his or her children in their developmental years undermines the basic foundation for establishing individual self-esteem in the children.”
Fowler added, “Emotion-based sibling rivalry is the struggle to gain attention and love from parents that was missing during childhood. The adult child’s actions and behaviors are directed toward gaining approval and recognition. This need may continue psychologically after the death of the parent. Rather than having a strong foundation for their own self-esteem, these adult children continue their emotional craving for and dependence upon their parents’ approval.”
According to Fowler, the second type of sibling rivalry is rooted in “conflict over business styles and strategies, rather than family emotions. While emotion-based rivalry is really about the child and the parent, strategy-based rivalry is really about the siblings.”
Governance is a powerful tool
In my governance work in Asia, strategic conflict is mainly driven by differences in management style and the siblings’ tolerance towards investments and financial risks. Crafting solutions requires a lot of advisor creativity, strategic experience and the ability to formulate corporate best practices as a common ground that siblings find acceptable.
Months before Ponty was killed, he had a premonition. It was triggered by an astrologer, who warned him that there was a “kaala saaya” (dark shadow) in his horoscope.
That dark shadow turned out to be a tragedy that erupted into a gangster-style execution initiated by his younger brother.
This gory ending had no winners, only losers and not only left a once mighty business in disarray but also a grieving mother, two widows, orphaned children and a devastated family.
As friends and family gathered and honored the deceased brothers, a senior member of the Gurdwara reflected, “May God give strength to their families to stay united in this time of hardship.”