Pickle Kings in Unseemly Pickle

"Inequality of work, wives, jealousies, general unhappiness, egos - the kitchen sink," company boss Kirit Pathak said in court Wednesday. "It's a soap opera." Kirit Pathak, 51, backed by his widowed mother, argues his sisters never had any legal entitlement to company shares. He told the court that his sisters' claim was "completely at odds with the Hindu culture and practices of the Pathak family" and that everyone in the family understood the business would pass to the sons. Matriarch Shantagaury Pathak, 77, who is backing Kirit, accused her daughters of "greed, jealousy and malice." On Feb. 17 she said they would "send me to my grave brokenhearted because of their own dissatisfaction with their husbands and their lives." Two days later, she collapsed after cross-examination and had to be helped into a taxi.