Some days he walked along the banks of the river that smelled of shit and pesticides bought with World Bank loans. - Arundhati Roy

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

Et tu, Caesar? Then fall, Caesar.
Et tu, Estha? Then fall, Estha.

To fuel yet another war – this time against Iraq – by cynically manipulating people’s grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to its people.