Category: POINT BLANK

Post J & K, Tamilnadu is now a fertile ground and the person capable of and in a position to reap the highest harvest is Stalin who formally took over as DMK chief a couple of days back.

For long, almost two decades, he was PM-in-waiting. He was the most qualified for the post and the only leader who could pose a credible threat to Congress.

To me, Karunanidhi is always K, a lazy way out from spelling out the full name.

It takes more than just foolishness to do what a BJP leader has done in ‘Dravidian’ Tamil Nadu. Although the bulk of the nation is under its thumb, Tamil Nadu has eluded its tentacles so far and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. One does not need a doctorate in astrology to predict it.

There were the sages of old and now there are the new age gurus with all the latest apparatus. Sri Jayendra Saraswathi was a little different from both.

You can take my word as it arises from prevailing experience: sloth is not sinful. Well, it might have been by choice or forced by some physical misfortune, but idling is by no means a vice.

The ground below started shifting long back. An undeniable and uncomfortable sense of irrelevance and lack of purpose was afflicting the writing community for quite some time. The belated tsunami struck me with full vigour during the recent three-month sabbatical, forced by a fall that stalled me physically, but kickstarted my introspective instincts.

As the Dinakaran Touring Talkies rolls cross country, are we really surprised? Nah! And who said the notorious M. Mafia only take and don’t give bribes? Of course they pay. How else you think they lasted this long?

Even by semi-official estimates, the slush cash used to bribe the voters of RK Nagar is around Rs 89 crs. Press freedom, previous experience and priority access to ‘sources that do not want to be identified’ allow us to round that off to Rs 100 crs. Indeed, last Friday was quite auspicious for IT kitty, if not for democracy.

Thirumangalam, in an ironic defiance of its pleasant sounding name, turned out to be most inauspicious for TN’s already fouled poll politics. The by-election, buy-election rather, held there in Jan ‘09 under the auspices, not of EC, but Alagiri, sparked a decisive plunge to the depths in voter bribery. R K Nagar today, in 2017, is the latest, lethal but not the last milestone in TN’s twisted, treacherous highway to a delusionary destination: Democracy.