Where are relationships heading to????

‘Ram’ and ‘Laxman’ are two brothers who love each other and care for the feelings of other. They go to school together, have food together, and sleep together. Their parents felt proud of their kids being so attached. Soon they grew up got married and had kids, one night their father suffered a heart stroke and died. There came the issues of owning the property. Soon the good days are ended, the brothers fought with each other like enemies, and they played foul with each other. They hated to talk to each other, and this lasted for ever…. Seems like a story of your house? I am sure there are lots of brothers all over the country, other than the Ambani’s, the Bachan’s, the Mahajan’s, who can relate themselves to this story.

Hindu culture values relationships either it be mother and son or husband and wife or a brother and sister. The elder brother is considered the head of the family after the father. It’s the land where Ram and Laxman are born who stood unitedly even during the hardships. But it’s sad to see the brothers fighting for petty issues and even going to the extent of killing each other. Probably because it’s the same land where brothers like Vaali and Sugreev are born.

The recent attack of Pravin Mahajan on his elder brother Promod Mahajan on a black morning, for treating him like ‘dirt’, shows the extent to which the relations are deteriorated. Poor Mahajan is still battling for life.

The Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil’s wrangle over the ownership of the family owned business conglomerate ‘Reliance’, went public after their father’s death in 2002. They din't speak to eact other even in public meetings. With three million investors, a family feud in Reliance concerns more than the Ambanis.

The division of the Birla Empire after the death of Gansyam Das Birla, third son of the founder of Birla group Raja Baldeo Das Birla, in 1986 was due to the ownership feud. Although these disputes never went public, the division of the empire itself is the proof. The family comes together only to celebrate marriages and mourn deaths. But after years there came yet another reason for the family to stay united, the will of Priyamvadha Birla in which she bequeathed all the assets of MP Birla group- estimated over 5000 crores, to an outsider of the Birla family- R S Lodha, auditor and vice chairman of many companies of M P Birla group. This is a big shock for the family, where an outsider is coming under the family roof. The Birla’s are battling this together.

The disputes between brothers in family owned business is ubiquitous. This is just not confined to the brothers in area of business. This more often occurs in the cases where one of the brothers is celebrity and the other is anonymous. The not so popular brothers in most cases suffer from a complex resulting from inferiority. To name few, Amithab Bhachan’s negative terms with his brother Ajithabh, misunderstandings between CM Rajasekhar Reddy and his brother Vivekananda Reddy, differences between Chandrababu Naidu and Ramamurthy Naidu,In the recent attack on Mahajan, Pravin Mahajan admitted the reason being ill treatment by his brother.

The disputes in families are not bound to brothers, even the purest of the blood relations have disagreements, which sometimes end up in loss of life. There are many instances all over the world where a blood relation is ended up with ‘blood’.

Nepal heir and apparent crown prince Dipendra, murdered his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, his brother, sister, two uncles and three aunts, for not accepting his choice of wife. He then shot himself and later went into coma. He died three days after being in coma.

We read similar instances of brutal murders with in the family day in and day out in news papers. Sad to see the families, which are supposed to bind together in happiness and hardship, killing each other on petty issues.