Let us face the truth squarely, rather, triangularly. The three main contestants to the CM post are visibly sick. The incumbent has to be propped every few paces, her opponent needs to be pushed around and the third can’t do without a prompter/ interpreter. But first, is it right to discuss a sensitive, private matter as health?
But, hey, are not polls, more so in TN, a perennial parade of personalities? After all, we the people entrust our fate and funds with such individuals, despite their terrible track record. Weepy Singh, the champion of social justice, milked the treasury even after power. There are many politicos whose ailments suddenly surface once in power. Would we be wrong in seeking a fitness certificate about their physical state, just in case? It’s only health, folks, not wealth, disproportionate or otherwise! Why get fussy?
For starters, law does not prevent a person of frail physique from holding a Constitutional post. Only those of ‘unsound mind’ are barred. But the status of someone’s grey matter is a medico-legal grey area and I cannot recall any precedent of disqualification on that ground. On a practical plane, no doctor with a sound mind will rule on the soundness of the mind of a powerful politico. In any case, sixty plus years of electoral demo’crazy’ is sure proof that many who populate Parli were/are paagals and many in Legislative Assemblies really belong to lunatic asylums.
So, with insanity out of bounds as an option of succour to people, the politicos’ bid for power remains an unassailable funda’mental’ right. Let’s therefore get it, er, out of mind and move to matters of flesh and blood. Here, unless the Maker intervenes, which he often does not to redeem but only to replace, the entrenched leaders have stayed put, their power boats shipshape even if they themselves are sick to the last cell. TN has two such spectacular specimens in its political mortuary: CMs, very ill during polls itself, dying in harness.
Anna was not in pink of health when he was DMK’s CM candidate in ‘67. After scripting a fabulous victory for his party, which has proved fatal for the State, his cancer flared. He was flown to the US for treatment. He came back and passed into history soon. His disease-dogged stint was short, lasting less than 2 years. Decades of dreamy, delusional Dravidian demagoguery just went to dust in a jiffy. Anna’s funeral broke attendance records, besides collateral deaths of co-borns and damage to property.
Next, it was his protege MGR’s turn. At the peak of power and popularity, the immortal hero of Tamil celluloid suddenly took ill in October 1984. A special plane-turned-flying-hospital took him to Brooklyn, US. In the Dec polls, his party swept to power. MGR himself won and was also sworn-in as CM, all in absentia, God knows how. He, MGR not God, returned to homeland in Feb 1985, made-up in his familiar facade, to the accompaniment of appropriate film songs. Earlier, in 1967, a bullet-ridden, bandaged MGR won from bed. He showed illness could actually be an electoral boon! MGR died in Dec ’87, broke his mentor’s record in posthumous crowd-pulling and was interred as-is-where-is, replete in dark glasses, fur cap, watch et al.
We are not wishing any such fate to befall the current contestants. But neither can we ignore their health. TN, shall we say, can ‘ill’ afford a non functioning CM, a la Anna or MGR. The State is worse off from where they left off. Just the visuals of these leaders in their current campaigns are enough to give us the jitters. K, 93, with more decades to look back, than days to look forward to, is an energetic challenger. He wheels and deals, in every sense of the phrase, in all vocal vigour much to the chagrin of opponents, not to mention sons. If in power and should he fall ill, TN is in store for a bloody family feud, State funded!
J, seated on a sanitised stage, is a sight to behold. At a safe distance, down in decks, often in the docks, are the potential candidates, as per the latest changes, placed like dolls in a kolu. Some symbolism that! At a greater distance are the people ‘arranged’ to be there in the searing sun from 11 AM, for the meeting at 3 PM. Their thalaivi is barely visible to their teary, sweat drenched eyes, but giant screens make up for the distance. Anyway, the voice of her ‘I’ness comes out in telling clarity, in a practised theatrical monotone. In her scheme, she is already CM. But so think the scheming foster sister and her sinister fraternity. A turn for worse in J’s health in power, and TN has had it, worse then the tsunamis and watery woes that usually flood her regimes.
Captain’s unstable locomotion is a lesser problem compared to the slur that impedes his … spirited bid for power. One wonders how he will deliver his punch dialogues in the Assembly. Wife can dictate but can’t dub for him. K assures us he says only what he does and does what he says. J declares she not only does what she says but also what she has not said, whatever it means. With C we cant even figure out what he says. How can we hold him for what he will do?
Now to the expense the State’s fragile finances has to foot if these prized but ‘poor’ VIPs should turn vegetable on the official table. I suggest we open more TASMAC outlets to raise additional revenues to preserve our precious leaders who claim to serve us!
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