Teacher’s pet
Apparently Khushboo's access to the DMK patriarch is causing a lot of heartburn amongst career politicians. It’s hard to believe she will settle for a ticket in the next assembly elections and then a ministership if the DMK comes back to power. Because that’s the best she could get now, in exchange for her usefulness to the DMK to pull in crowds on the campaign trail in next year’s elections. She should be wary. Hema Malini’s is a case in point because despite her usefulness to the BJP over the years, she could not get a renomination to Rajya Sabha. Instead that party chose Ram Jethmalani who not only stood against Atal Bihari Vajpayee but even hurled unprintable epithets at him.
At Karunanidhi's birthday, a few weeks after she joined the DMK, Khushboo was on the dais with stalwarts like K Anbazhagan, Arcot Veeraswamy and Durai Murugan. Felicitating Karunanidhi, she said: “I joined the DMK because it is the only party which fights for women and their rights.” Perhaps she did not realise it when she did a game show called Jackpot for eight years on Jaya TV (which has the highest TRP ratings of all the shows on the channel). But now she has no compunction about rubbishing MGR: " MGR films centred on heroes and had names like Aayarithal Oruvan (One among a thousand), whereas in the scripts Karunanidhi wrote, his chief protagonists were women like Rajakumari, Parashakti, etc.," she genuflected. Even the current film (which reportedly has bombed at the box office) is called Penn Singham (Lioness). Of course, she got wolf whistles and thunderous applause from the party crowd.
She did not forget to lavish praise on deputy CM Stalin and Azhagiri either. For the latter she quoted a dialogue that megastar Rajnikanth spouts in one of his films to the effect that his enemies tremble at his very name. Don’t know if Rajnikanth – who has allowed grass to grow under his feet while everyone speculates about whether or not he will join politics – or Azhagiri were flattered by this comparison.
It must be said that while the Karunanidhi clan was a prominent showpiece at the the recent World Classical Tamil Conference, Khushboo was missing. Strange, considering her film record should have got her a wildcard entry. Or has she already rubbed DMK men the wrong way, being so high profile? Or maybe she has decided to be low profile after rubbing shoulders initially with the movers and shakers in the party.
It remains to be seen what she gets from the DMK in terms of power, because she’s already raking in the moolah thanks to her successful production house, apart from acting.
Khushboo's replacement
But Khushboo’s not going to be making any more money from Jackpot because she has been dropped. After joining the DMK, did she really expect to continue on Amma’s channel in a political milieu where the rivalry between Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi is personal and marked by vengeance? The show’s producers K P Sunil, who happens to head the news section in Jaya TV, and his wife Hema have zeroed in on Nadhiya as a replacement, whose stint in Kollywood included different roles starting with Poovae Poochudava. She made a comeback recently in a range of films including Thamirabarani and Sandai.