Amma rally and Tamil script by Puneet Rajhans

Hotel International Madurai has a signboard at its entrance. It says: "Hotel International Madurai was inaugurated in 1973." Doing the honours were K Rajaram (B.A. degree under his belt) Minister of Tourism, Government of Tamil Nadu and S Mutthu (occupant of the Mayor Chair), MLC. Underneath the signboard are enough signs to grapple with. First the year 1973 when very few of us in the North would have given into the temptation of visiting Madurai. Second the Madurai of that period hadn't had the potential to unleash turbulence in the political landscape of the state. Not to be outdone these days it has the capacity to hold a capacity crowd for a rally addressed by Jayalalitha (Amma) about two weeks ago.

The rally saw Amma break/tear her opponent (DMK supremo Alagiri) into pieces (the number one has lost count of) for his temerity to run from Parliament even when there is no session. She castigated him by observing that one can understand his unpreparedness to Parliament questions during question hour or his underperformance during Parliament debates. But what prevents him to show up when there is no session.Though the rally was organised on the outskirts of the city adjacent to the ring road and this brougth me back to the commute i took from Town Hall Road to main bus stand. The old man sitting next to me guided me on the places of historical and political import on the way. "Sir, this is city's busiest local market; this is Madurai court and this is Madurai corporation." He seemed to have fallen for the building that housed Madurai corporation as he repeatedly suggested how important this institution was, perhaps also guided by the fact that he had had to make innumerable rounds to this place for settling his tax arrears which he found to be of unbearble proportion given his meek existence in this place.

Next on his radar to shift my gaze towards was the Madurai Ground where all big and small personalities step in to address the gathering. Sensing my sense of dejection at the size of the Ground, he emphasised its import by recalling the PMs and CMs who have stepped in there to keep their boat sailing. All along likes of me have been brought up with the idea that Ramlila Ground and Boat Club in Delhi have benchmarked themselves as the venues to give a clarion call to bring a change in the govt or having ushered in a new regime spell out the strategies the new regime would sway to annihilate the regimes of the past. Perhaps the Madurai Ground had begun to position itself as the nervecentre for political activism for leaders across nation; perhaps looking appropriate given the low attendance that rallies of leaders in the north have. For leaders and soon-to-be-crowned leaders the Madurai setting would be an appropriate one to have the real feel of the masses as Hindi hearland leaders rarely get to have the pulse of the aam janata.
While the aftereffects of the Amma's rally led to huge chunk of a transport (bullock carts, men, women and babies on foot included) to be diverted to another end of the city, the thoughts on billboards and cutouts refused to go away. Though fairly less than the Nagercoil adventure (the DMK rally here was the biggest to date given their intent to declare the nemesis of their opponents by draping the entire town with billboards and cutouts). These billboards and cutouts coast the leaders to cast aspersion on others - their declaration as misfits for the professional world and the right material for the political theatre is the first step to adorn the big boards - have messages beneath them that comes for a bill that runs into soon-and-not-yet-declared figures that are normally settled in out of court settlement as figures and fittings bloat beyond imagination.

AS leaders shot to fame courtesy boards and cutouts, it is highly unlikely that these prized posessions would disappear in the next 10 years given the depleting audience to other tools of projection like TV and print media. As Amma looked to be blessed in most of these cutouts, her thundering that she won't be cowed down by Alagiri was the one that could not be taken lightly. The weight she brings to the chair she presides over and the weightage her partymen carry in and out of power is enough for the Central Govt to take stock of the arsenal and the space she occupies. As Alagiri was nowhere to be unearthed and discovered for miles in and around the rally there was one cutout of his that conveyed a lot. Here in a cutout he is captured on speaking on a mobile outside the BSNL building. Is he endorsing the BSNL product or conveying that he is touching base with his party workers day in and day out, not to be cowed down by Amma's increasing threats to blast her way to Madurai? Perhaps the mobile he is speaking on and the place he is operating from on the Madurai rally day could be the Central Hall of Parliament when there is no session and all the watch and ward staff are glued to TV sets which they fail to catch on when the session is on.

In the safe environs of Central Hall, Alagiri is writing a speech in Tamil (still the level of comfort in English and Hindi is abysmally low) where he would blast Amma as well as his pa led state govt for letting Amma hold fort in his fortress. The speech would have an all india release targeted at Tamil, Telugu, Kannad and Hindi audience - cautioning the aam janata on attempts of his opponents to sweep him under the carpet by holding a rally in Majestic Madurai where only Kings have the audacity to roar.
As Amma concluded her speech and Alagiri finished his writing effort (speech to be distributed to the audience for the next one year to negate the ill effects of a Queen to roar in Madurai), the crowd at the rally looked to be somewhat dispossessed disoriented and dismembered. As a result quite a handful of them boarded buses that were not supposed to ply in the city and this led to another session of chaos and mayhem. Another cop with a liquor bottle in his hand waved at a bus coming from RMM . The plight and the power of the cop was enough for the driver to oblige him. Once inside the cop slipped to a corner for a duration not known to anyone.
The crowd besieged with the power of Amma to spew venom and threats at her opponents desired for a proportionate rally in future - and the Amma backers promised to hold another one in another DMK bastion provided they ensured Alagiri stayed in Parliament on the designated day, session or no session.