The response? Sports columnists all over the world are writing peevish essays about "the end of hero worship". A typical response came from CBS Sportsworld: "Hero worship was officially pronounced dead in this particular corner of the sports world."

Hah! You call that hero worship? Polite enthusiasm turning to mild disappointment? If you want to know what real hero worship is, look at examples from Asia.

We make our heroes into gods, literally. And if they let us down, we don't write peevish essays: we throw ourselves off cliffs in large numbers. This is a much healthier response. Ask any psychiatrist. It's bad to let negative feelings fester.

Consider Indian politician Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. He died in a helicopter crash reported on Sept. 3, a Wednesday. The following day, Indian newspapers reported that numerous TV viewers had dropped dead of shock.

Those who survived died later - they took their own lives. The first to go was a potter named Uppalaiah who had seen the news of Reddy's death on TV and immediately expired in front of the box.

The number of deaths from shock from hearing the news of Reddy's death mounted. By the Friday they were in triple figures: 115 people had died of horror and 26 committed suicide. "When something tragic happens, they cannot bear the loss," psychiatrist Dr Yerra Sridhar Raju told the Deccan Chronicle newspaper.

A week later, the politician's party reported that more than 400 people had now died of amazement, plus a further 60 had taken their own lives. The dead man's son Jaganmohan Reddy made a public announcement telling people to stop dropping dead or killing themselves. "If you resort to such things, this will hurt him," he said, without specifying how exactly the dead man would be hurt.

Parts of the story started to unravel when skeptical reporters tracked down the first man to die of shock - the potter who had collapsed in front of the TV news. It turned out that the guy was 70, had been sick for weeks and had never owned a television. Then bereaved families revealed that they were paid cash from the dead man's party if they registered "shock" as the cause of death.

Was it all fake? Probably not. Indian news commentators reckon the figures were boosted by the addition of a few natural deaths, but scores of people probably did die of shock. I mean, we are talking about India.

Oddly, this means that Reddy is now responsible for more deaths than any serial killer in the history of the country. However, no one is going to blame him. First, it wasn't his fault, and second, he's dead. Besides, we all die some time, and to die of love is probably one of the best ways to go. (And I don't mean Woods' version of love.)

But the Reddy story could never happen in the West. "George W Bush expires: hundreds die of grief." Somehow, I think it just ain't gonna happen.

The writer is a columnist and journalist.

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