The last few days I have been hearing a lot of noise regarding the cost of Maggie Thatcher’s funeral. And  obviously that got me thinking.

You see, in India, amongst us Hindus, we have a practice…I am sure it is similar to many other practices but that’s not the point. When it’s time for us to remember the dead and departed, we normally conspire to make the atmosphere seem like he or she was still around. We frame the same mood that the dead person liked, cook up his or her favorite dishes, serve the liquor he loved…and in fact celebrate every aspect of that person with a lot of passion and fervor.

So we eat, drink and make merry on a particular day after a certain amount of mourning. There is a ritual attached to the whole thing and it is that ritual that helps us, all of us, his/her friends, families etc. come to terms with death and in an act of ultimate release, we rediscover the good things that made the person what he or she was in life.

Now I think Maggie Thatcher’s death should be ‘celebrated’ as if she was orchestrating the funeral.

The moment you imagine that, the whole issue acquires a fresh perspective. And suddenly you realize that you’re bitching about a few million dollars…chump change compared to the contribution the Grand Old Lady made to the world in general and England in particular. Her Iron Maiden moniker was not easily earned. And not easily maintained either.

She had to work. In an alien and hostile environment, amidst several men who were baying for her blood at every turn…and hats off to her for having done what she did, when she did it. If in retrospect what she did was wrong or bad, we as people who supported her then and applauded her every move, need to shoulder the responsibility as well.

So yes, a hard decision has to be taken. Spend on her funeral or spend on welfare measures. Her logic may have said – the spend on a funeral is a one time cost…the spend on welfare is just the beginning, and it’s a recurring cost too – so let’s be hard nosed and commit to the one time expense. And if you think that’s what she would have said, I think we need to step back and let the world remember her as she was in her prime…and not how history profiled her in the years to come.

Maggie Thatcher RIP.