JJ: Some Jottings

CHIDAMBARAM AND MAYILADUDURAI

In Big Hindu Temples, the godhead can be ritualistically touched only by the priest. The masses have darshan,from a safe nonpolluting distance. In Tamil Nadu, April happens to be thiruvizha time (annual festival)for most temples, when the godhead stirs out of the confines of the sanctum sanctorum and goes around giving darshanperched on a ther (rath). In Tamil Nadu, elections mean thiruvizha. It is spectacle time. And J.Jayalalitha is the reigning goddess who has set out on a two-month darshan-giving tour.

Prakash is probably the only person in Tamil Nadu who can get really close to Jayalalitha in public view.When a moth repeatedly finds itself drawn towards Amma in Mayiladudurai, safari suit-clad Prakash quicklyhands over the silver coffee tray he is holding to a security guard, takes a bold step towards the reigningdeity of the Tamil makkal, and flips the moth off her shoulder. She is momentarily distracted, butcontinues with her well-rehearsed speech that she now seems to know by rote. Reporters who have been followingher since she launched her campaign on March 9 have nothing new to jot down. She says exactly the same thingson April 9 at Mayiladudurai, where even a Congress candidate of the stature of Mani Shankar Aiyar does notmerit a mention.

In Hindu iconography gods and goddesses are human-like. So Jayalalitha sweats. She wipes the sweat off herface with a white handkerchief. An alert Prakash notices that Amma has placed the once-used handkerchief onthe edge of the podium. He quickly replaces it with a fresh one. What he did at Madurantakam on March 9 herepeats on April 9 at Mayiladudurai.

Having been asked to come at 1 p.m. we wait till 3.15 p.m. before the Jayalalitha convoy hits the road inChidambaram. Her campaign manager P.A. Sengottaiyan, a former state minister, who like Jayalalitha wasconvicted and sentenced to prison but later acquitted, insists that we board one of the Tempo Travellers meantfor the press and be officially part of her convoy. "If you come in your own vehicle, you cannot be partof our convoy. You will always trail us by a few kilometres." I do not challenge this warning and enterthe Tempo Traveller. A BBC team that tailgates the convoy for 84 km from Chidambaram to Triuvarur, is alwaystrailing, never getting a glimpse of Amma.

In Chidambaram, Jayalalitha decides to descend on a small crowd further weakened by a blazing sun. If thecrowd followed the newspapers, or at least Jaya TV, it would have realised that she was making the same oldspeech asking the people of Tamil Nadu to reject the half-baked foreigner Antonio Maino aka Sonia Gandhi andchoose the experienced son of the soil, Vajpayee. "How can someone not loyal to the memory of her latehusband be loyal to the nation? Sonia, by falling at the feet of those holding the tails of her husband’smurderers [DMK, MDMK being Tiger-LTTE sympathisers], has proved that she has neither pati-bhakti nor desh-bhakti.This is an opportunistic alliance."

But the audience has come see Jayalalitha, not listen to her. Even when she makes the odd, new, interestingpoint there is no applause. Certain portions of the script even I know by heart. That she was not the one whoapproached the people only at the time of elections; that in the last three years she had attended 32functions in districts to launch development works worth Rs.9,694.20 crores; that she worked 20 hours a day tomake Tamil Nadu the No. 1 state; that in three years she has achieved development possible only in 30 years. Her appellations for her opponents also remain the same: Loudmouth Vaiko, Caste Fanatic Ramadoss, ParasiticKarunanidhi.In one instance, Amma’s speech from a previous rally was played to engage a crowd waiting forhours. After Amma arrived, she read out the same speech and the audience was not amused. The party’sdistrict secretary was ticked off.

A watchful security guard picks a dry leaf that has dared to fall on the green carpet spread between thedais and Amma’s vehicle and disposes it.

Forty minutes hence, reporters scurry back to the Tempo Traveller and the long convoy moves again. Beforethe first pit-stop at Kollidam, 10 km from Chidambaram, a reporter of a Tamil daily briefs his bureau chief inChennai on his cell-phone. "Nothing she said was new, sir. Addhey speech. The only new point washer sarcasm over Karunanidhi writing letters to each member of the Central Chennai constituency to vote forDayanidhi Maran—Karunanidhi wants only his grandnephew to win, she said. Please add that it was really hotin Chidambaram."

Reporters then unpack packets of Haldiram’s bhujia which a security guard passes around.

The press vans move along with the advance pilot and Sengottaiyan’s car, and the front half of the convoyreaches a roadside speechmaking venue, Sirkazhi, well ahead of the core part of the convoy carryingJayalalitha, Sasikala Natarajan and Prakash. While on the move, we are sometimes separated by 15 minutes.Reporters and camerapersons assemble at a point where a local party leader holds aloft a huge two-leavessymbol, one leaf embossed with MGR’s image and another with Jayalalitha’s. This is for Jayalalitha to knowthe exact point where her Tempo Traveller should halt. While on the wait, a party worker does a Jayalalitha archanai:"Amma is on her way, Purtachi Thalaivi is coming, Mother Cauvery is coming, Our Golden Leader will behere any moment, Mother Tamizh is coming, the Leader of Self-Respect will be here, the Goddess of our Heartsis on her way, the Lion-like Leader is coming, the Future of India…" He repeats this in a rehearsedmonotone like a temple priest recites the Various Names of the Lord—sahasranamam.

Waiting for JJ, I talk to flag-bearers of the Moovendrar Munnetra Kazhagam, a thevar front that backs theAIADMK, and ask them about AIADMK’s chances. "The AIADMK is working very hard. But the DMK-led alliancecan be confident without doing any work because their alliance arithmetic is such. " Finally, asiren-blowing Ambassador flashes a dipper and Amma’s Tempo Traveller is on its way, with a benign goldenlight falling gently on her face—the halo.Security personnel cordon her vehicle with a thick nylon rope, aminimal distance of eight feet separating the goddess and devotees. Several people fall flat on the road,sometimes candidates too, though Amma does not even lower the glass window of her van. A couple of localpriests welcome her with poorna kumbhams—decorated silver pots fastened with a coconut on top—butJayalalitha does not personally receive kumbhams at pit-stops. She does not stir out of theair-conditioned vehicle except in key towns where a dais is arranged. Nor is her vehicle fitted with a cranedevice to prop her up so that more people can have darshan.

She remains seated inside and begins her speech. "My Tamil people who are dearer to me than mylife!" Before she begins, a security officer briefly flashes a placard at her, indicating the place sheis currently in, the constituency, and the name of the AIADMK or BJP candidate there. Then she reads like anewscaster from A-4 size cardboard plaques strategically placed out of the public view. Sasikala Natarajan,her confidante, can sometimes be seen passing her new cardboard plaques. A roadside speech is an abridgedeight-minute version of the longer 40-minute one delivered from a dais.

Behind her, standing in an open-top jeep, is the candidate O.S.Manian, AIADMK’s propaganda secretarypitted against Mani Shankar Aiyar. He stands, hands held in vanakkam, during the course of Amma’sspeech. In Mayiladudurai town, the punishment lasts longer: he has to stand erect for forty minutes and findsit difficult to hold his hands in vanakkam position and keeps shuffling. No candidate gets to speak a word.Jayalalitha does all the talking, and in Mayiladudurai she does not dignify Aiyar with a mention.

After she leaves, I speak to T.R. Viswanatha Gurukkal and his son T.R.V. Gurumoorthy, pig-tailed priestsfrom the Tiruverkadu temple from whom she accepted the poorna kumbham before heading for the dais. DoesManian stand a chance here? "No way. Mani Shankar Aiyar will win hands down. Even as she addresses arally of 20,000 people, he would have personally met 20,000 voters in his constituency. Nobody know Manianhere," says Viswanatha Gurukkal. In fact, most of the 33 AIADMK candidates are faceless and bank solelyon Jayalalitha’s charisma. Nor does Jayalalitha believe in mingling with the crowds like Sonia does.

I wonder what happens to the used kerchiefs blessed with Amma’s sweat wiped off her rose-petal face? Agood campaign manager would have perhaps decided to distribute these among the darshan-seekers andboosted the Amma cult.