Eleven Candidates for Mayor, down from Twelve

Varanasi is due to have elections for Mayor and City Councel in two days. So the streets have been clogged with political demonstrations, and thousands of extra gun toting goons have moved onto the streets, allegedly to prevent violence.

There used to be twelve candidates for Mayor. It is down to eleven now.

Seems last week one of them had a bit of an accident.

Seems he wanted to get his picture in the paper. So some photographers egged him on to light himself on fire (in protest over something, just what escapes me), then they would take his picture, and then put out the fire. So the end result would be that he would get his picture in the paper emmoliating himself, but wouldn't get hurt.

So they dashed a little kerosine on his shirt, lit a match and quickly took some photos before putting the fire out. But the photos weren't very good quality.

So they did it again. Dashed a little extra kerosine on him, and tossed a match.

Only this time they couldn't get the fire out, and it spread too quickly (a bane upon this modern polyester clothing). And he ended up with 90% burns on his body and died later that day.

Isn't that frustrating when you try to stage a self-emmoliation in order to get your picture in the paper, and it actually works? I am sure there are lessons for us all to learn here, but other than "Don't be foolish", I probably won't mention any more.