Karunanidhi: Shaken and stirred, not shattered

The people of Tamil Nadu have offered me a good rest. My greetings to them,” is what Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president M Karunanidhi said after the AIADMK’s steamroller victory in the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections on May 13. Read bet­ween the lines, and the rest doesn’t look like time off. Reduced to leading a party that is not even the principal opposition in his state, Karunanidhi has to instead work overtime for the next five years to bring the DMK back into power.

More than the electoral defeat, it is the 2G scam case and the arrest of his MP-daughter Kanimozhi in connection with it that has shaken the former chief minister. Instead of reacting to the developments in Tamil Nadu such as Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s decision to shift the Assembly-cum-Secretariat complex from the massive building constructed during his tenure to Fort St George and her charges against the DMK regime, Karunanidhi has had to rush to New Delhi to console his jailed daughter.
The octogenarian Dravidian leader, a five-time chief minister, is known to be a strong-willed but emotional person. He has faced many setbacks in his 70 years of active politics, and his recoveries from them are the stuff of legend.
In the past two weeks, Karunanidhi has rarely stayed at his plush CIT Colony residence, where his second wife Rajathi Ammal and her daughter Kanimozhi live, though he has visited the house a few times. But on May 25, Karunanidhi was his usual self. After a gap of a fortnight, Karunanidhi chaired the DMK MLAs meeting at the party headquarters, Anna Arivalayam. He is said to have taken questions very patiently and answered them in his inimitable style.
Karunanidhi is known to rise at 4.30 am, beginning his day with yoga and meditation. At around 6 am, he starts reading newspapers and is ready to meet visitors from 8.30 am onwards. Till he became the chief minister again in 2006, Karunanidhi used to visit the office of the DMK mouthpiece Murasoli almost every day.
Till 2008, Karunanidhi used to take an early morning stroll around the DMK headquarters along with a couple of party leaders and discuss various issues. He had to give this up after a spinal surgery; walking was confined to his room with the help of his personal assistant Nithyanandam.
“One of the characteristic features of Karunanidhi is that he never takes worries and sudden shocks to his heart. Instead, he takes them to the brain and hence, he has been able to find out solutions calmly,” says a DMK leader known to be close to the DMK supremo.
Kanimozhi’s arrest upset him a great deal, however. He skipped his yoga and some meals for a couple of days. That was quite a contrast from his usual self, for he had been visiting the new and massive Assembly-cum-Secretariat complex, his dream project, at least twice a day, monitoring the Rs1,200-crore project despite being in wheelchair.
Karunanidhi is now preparing to mark his 88th birthday (June 3), an occasion most believe will revive the spirits of dejected DMK workers and supporters. The Tha­laivar may be down, but he’s not out. Not yet.