When Balasaheb travelled in autorickshaw through the city

He remembers how the ideology of Shiv Sena had been deeply instilled in his father since the late 60s. "Of course it was not just blindly going against the law or authorities, but it was a very systematic thing. Balasaheb had given clear orders during the famine in 1972. He had asked my father to go and loot the godowns of people who were hoarding kerosene, food grains and selling them in the black market. He asked him not to care about anything but to ensure that the same are sold at fair prices to those who needed them and give the money to the shopkeeper," he says.

The most vivid memory Kanade shares about his father and Thackeray is of 1970. "My father had bought an autorickshaw and took it to show Balasaheb who was in the city then. He (Thackeray) insisted on travelling with my father throughout the city that day and even told him at the end of the day about how happy he felt going through Pune in the vehicle of a branch head of his party," he recalls.

A stone's throw distance from Kanade's building is a ramshackle single-storey structure. Here, octogenarian Malati Shelar appears stunned on hearing Shiv Sena supremo's death. "Today only they wrote in the paper that he is doing well. These people all tell lies. I remember he stayed in this very building when he was young..." Shelar recalls, going on to describe Thackeray's greatness.

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