The poor Peter principle in Sheena Bora's murder
In management theory, the Peter Principle is that every employee will rise or get promoted to his or her level of incompetence. Which is to say, that eventually if you're stupid enough, you'll get caught out by your own inadequacies.
At the risk of all those who believe in the "poor Peter" theory, the Alpha Male being besotted and blinded by love with the Alpha Female theory, may I say, please, drop it? It is convenient to paint Indrani Mukerjea as the murdered mother and the clever gold digger. It is equally convenient to paint Peter Mukerjea as Peter Dufferjea, so much in love with this gorgeous, younger woman, that he did not question her - on her past husbands, her previous children, and certainly not on the curious three year absence of her sister/daughter (Chinatown, here we come).
It is easy to point to Indrani Mukerjea's reinvention from Pori Bora to Indrani Khanna to Indrani Mukerjea, but what about Peter Mukerjea's own reinvention from Pratim Mukerjea of Doon School, graduated in 1971, to Peter Mukerjea - genial ad sales in charge under a series of Star TV bosses, from Siddhartha Ray, its first general manager here, to Andrew Carnegie, to Rathikanta Basu, the man Rupert Murdoch imported so controversially from Doordarshan - to successful Star TV CEO between 1997 and 2007. Mukerjea was in the right place at the right time and when Murdoch removed Basu because the government of the day was gunning for him, he was beautifully placed to continue its Indianisation strategy. With Sameer Nair as his able deputy, Mukerjea picked up Amitabh Bachchan to front the game show Kaun Banega Crorepati, surrounded it with Ekta Kapoor serials, and a new formula was born.
Mukerjea never looked back and coasted through his professional life on the back of his amiable personality, landing at INX as Chief Strategy Officer. Having left his first wife and his two sons from her, he lived a happy singleton's life, until of course he met his match in a woman as ambitious and focused as he, a classic cas of Good Time Guy meeting Good Time Girl, or if you will believe their critics, Bunty meets Babli. Would a man who managed to get a good settlement out of Murdoch, which enabled him to own a comfortable house in Worli, Mumbai, among other property, not know something was amiss in his wife's conduct, the wife whom he has put in charge of his very valuable new investment, backed by Temasek, INX?
Tough to believe.
The Mukerjeas are fascinating to us not only because they are rich and clearly have an inadequate grip on what we know as morality. They are fascinating to us because they defy two conventions.
We like to believe that good Indian parents will sacrifice everything for their children, their careers, their love for each other, their friendships. Children come first, the couple comes later. If a son tells you something is amiss, you tend to believe him as much as you would believe your wife. You don't dismiss him and then not speak to him for three years.
We also like to believe that women who have had multiple partners are "fast", while men who have had multiple partners are just doing what they're meant to - spreading peace and happiness around. A man in love cannot kill but a woman in love can. A man in love is just blinded by love, and the woman in love is blinded by murderous rage.
Which may explain why Bonnie and Clyde's desi version was the rather tame Bunty aur Babli. Conning together is fine, but killing together is not.
At least one half of the couple has to be innocent, no?