new delhi arun jaitley was flying back from goa when he landed in new delhi at 315 pm on sunday he switched on his cellphone and received a flurry of messages his friend madhavrao scindia was dead by the evening jaitley and minister in the pmo vijay goel were on an indian air force plane to agra just a little after 6 am they returned to hand over scindias body to his son jyotiraditya who had driven to the technical area of palam airport with congress president sonia gandhi he had spoken to me just a day before about the bcci elections recalls jaitley who in his avatar as a lawyer had argued for scindia in the hawala case madhav and i shared a good relationship though he was eight years older than i we were part of a common circle of friends says jaitley among them by the evening even as politicians left the family at 27 safdarjung road to grieve privately were lawyers raian karanjawala who lent jyotiraditya his phone rajiv luthra and abhishek manu singhvi yuvraj of kota bharat singh and congressman suresh kalmadi kept his family company wife madhavi raje sister yadhodhara raje vasundhara raje was to arrive later in the night from london daughter chitrangada soninlaw vikramaditya and son jyotiraditya i found his son taking it very well he was very brave says kamal nath the congress mp from chhindwara got a call from sonia gandhi when he was at frankfurt airport on his way to berlin for an environmental conference he took the next plane home madhya pradesh chief minister digvijay singh was to fly in from london later while arjun singh was still abroad for mani shankar aiyar who would have been on the plane were it not for the hand of god it was an occasion to recall his sense of humour i first met him in 1982 when he disagreed with my views on pakistan yet asked that i vet his paper years later i got my revenge on him when he wanted the defence portfolio and i said i would not trust it to one whose forefathers had lost the third battle of panipat he was a prince but a peoples prince like most cwc members he was at palam too waiting for the plane from agra to land so was sushma swaraj whod spent sunday meeting relatives of the journalists who were killed she waited at the airport from 330 am onwards and then accompanied the bodies to the hospital her cabinet colleague pramod mahajan too spent over two hours waiting at the airport it was the last act in a malevolent tragedy which has wiped out an entire generation of congress leaders through unnatural death as aiyar put it