Tamilnadu’s trysts with tragedy continues. The latest, Actor-politician Vijay’s rally that has so far claimed forty one lives, 8 children and 17 women included, morbid as it sounds, was waiting to happen. The throngs all through his last few meetings were terrifying for a political observer of many decades like me, just for this precarious prospect.
I never saw Vijay through any other prism other than the potential for damage and danger he held out to the State’s peace and public order, given the familiar fanaticism of his frenzied followers. After all he had hardly anything to offer except his cultivated image and this has in turn extracted a hefty price in flesh, blood, bones and bodies besides rending many poor families asunder.
This is Tinsel Nadu where cinema mania is a genetic obsession, where reel is real, where punch dialogues pass for public policy, the man, or for that matter, woman, is the message, where fans outnumber voters by a massive margin and the skin-thin screen idol is deemed a worthy object of blind worship. Indeed, if the entire world is a stage, as a bard put it, then this State as the most notorious theatre of the absurd would walk away with all awards hands down.
Starting with MGR, every actor worth his/her make up is a wannabe CM at best or an MLA at minimum. With houses-full star gazers galore all over and film firmament shining dawn to midnight, rain or shine, celluloid is the ideal medium and the preferred meeting point for rajas and prajas alike. While for the aspirant movies offer instant and constant familiarity and even fame, for the audience leaders are delivered on their most favoured, flavoured platter.
The deadly cocktail of cinema and politics is a Dravidian legacy. Story tellers, script writers and stars, super or otherwise, have always swayed the fate of the State, much to its detriment, on par with TASMAC, which made it Tippler Nadu too. Vijay’s entry last year was just what no well-wishing, sensible doctor would have ordered, given the intoxicated populace. But alas, while a few feared and felt the usual dread, the actor saw an opportunity, and the masses, a messiah. And what a mess, now!
But to his ‘credit’, Vijay is not the first to draw collective blood: TN has been painted red many times, since the mid-sixties not surprisingly coinciding with the rise of DMK and later, AIADMK. The anti-Hindi agitations of 1965 – vintage had a dead head count of 150 plus. The leaders of the movement survived without scratch, while the martyrs now have subways, statues and state buildings in their names. Anna’s funeral that drew record crowds sent many mourners travelling on train top to the pits much before Anna himself was earthed. MGR’s death inspired quite a few, some of whom also knocked down a Karunanidhi statue. For his part, yellow towel rationalist K and his kith, kin and skin, ensured much blood-letting, from Annamalai University to Azhagiri. J’s quota included few scores getting trampled at a temple festival pond, besides a bus burning, not to speak of deaths due to negligence during floods and even at a flood-relief centre.
I have not included hooch deaths because it is a profound matter of state policy and which also impinges on the rights of the Kudimagans of this rational State. Really one ‘grave’ crisis after another have recurred with the regularity of film releases, polls and ‘buy’-polls. Suffice to say that the grim reaper has had quite a harvest in this benighted land with abundant participation from politicos and people, alike. This is not to shame or blame the victims, but the heart bleeds at this wholly avoidable tragedy, given the very recent visible trends, court strictures and administrative counsel, all of which were blissfully ignored and blatantly violated.
As a lesson, late and fatal as it is for many, but for future sake, why not once and for all delink our plight from the blight that pours from the many multiplexes 24/7 and tell our heroes that the show is over, it’s curtains down and we are no longer cut-out for their fads and fancies and fantasies? We are sick of such pompous populist Pied Pipers beguiling emotionally vulnerable crowd to doom. See, Vijay running away without as much as glancing back or a word of apology for the monumental torment he and his party has inflicted on such a devout, trusting, long nurtured admirers has made him a villain in a blink.
Don’t we have a multi-party political cast playing that role, already?
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