Native Paramakudi yet to get ready to receive Kamal Haasan

PARAMAKUDI: Every year, sleepy

Paramakudi

hits headlines during the Thevar and Immanuel Jayanthi. As is the case during the rest of the year, this town in Ramanathapuram district wears a deserted look even on the eve of its son, actor

Kamal Haasan’s political entry

. Kamal will have a stopover at Paramakudi on Wednesday on his way from former President

APJ Abdul Kalam’s house

to the public meeting venue at Madurai.

Barring a few small hoardings and posters and a simple makeshift stage that is coming up, there is no festivity on display. But Paramakudi residents have love and affection in abundant measure for Kamal. Before he was launched as a child artiste in

‘Kalathur Kannamma

’, which brought him laurels and set him firmly on an acting career that would last decades, he did his schooling here.

“But for him, Paramakudi would have remained just a dot on India’s map. Today, people around the world know about our town. Kamal gave us that identity,” says a government teacher, who prefers to be known by his pen name, Malarmaindhan. He is also the coordinator of Kamal’s fan clubs in the region.

“It is the right time for him to enter politics,” said N Thamilarasu, a physical education teacher and an ardent “devotee” of the actor. His only worry is that Kamal has the habit of speaking his mind. Would that augur well for the actor in politics is his concern. Thamilarasu now owns the house, which earlier belonged to Kamal’s late father, D Seenivasan, a respectable lawyer in the town. Kamal grew up there. “It was not pre-planned. It just happened in 2005. I get elated when Kamal’s fans from far and near visit my house. Some even kiss the floor,” he says.

People do not have high expectations. “So far, the choice has been between the two Dravidian parties. Let there be a new alternative. We do not want freebies, but someone who will protect us from steep increase in prices of essentials,” says Ravishankar, a sugarcane juice vendor.

“Kamal practises healthy politics. He is neither left nor right and that’s what TN needs. He holds Dravidianism in high esteem and that makes people like me happy,” points out writer N S Perumal, a Dravidian historian. For 85-yearold V P Shankar, an artist and a family friend of Kamal’s father since his Sarvodaya Sangam days, Kamal’s transition from a successful star to a politician is quite natural.


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