No honey blandishments for Veddah Chief Life does dance on a razor blade

How fast death follows a gala celebration to remind us all that there but for the grace of God or our karmic forces go we.

Three Monday's ago senior BJP member Gopinathrao Munde was at the summit of his career taking his oaths in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan as India's Minister of Panchayati Raj, Drinking Water and Sanitation. For long had he climbed up the party ladder, rung by rung, to claim his due reward at the top. The following Tuesday, barely seven days of being sworn in, he lay dead, with his hopes and dreams of wielding power as Minister of the Union coffined with his mortal corpus.

When the world seemed his oyster, he was killed in an accident at a roundabout barely a mile away from Modi's residence, during the early morning traffic when a car, ignoring the right of way, crashed into the vehicle Munde was travelling in. But death is no respecter of persons and Minister or no, the oil in Munde's lamp had dried and the wick was blown. He was on his way to the airport to catch a plane to his home state Maharashtra for victory celebrations arranged by party members but fate decreed he board a different flight earlier than schedule.

So the first sad rain has fallen on India's party and Modi's term which got off with so much life and buoyancy has met the first pits of death. The party has stopped in midair even as Munde's life was mowed in mid flight. This of course will not veer the Modi juggernaut off its tracks the slightest but it brings the whole Modi road show to ground zero, to reality where death is but part and parcel of life. And provides a striking message to all those who think, talk and act as if they were but born to live forever.

It should drive home the message that the tumbril parked outside their door is waiting the appointed hour; and that, with the Damocles sword overhead arrayed, all life dances on a razor blade.