Protector and fighter, the enigma of Amma will live on
What mattered to Jayalalithaas
supporters was that she was always there for them, even if
only in spirit
GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
In death, as in life, Jayalalithaa has shown herself to be larger than life. From the hour she was hospitalised, nothing else mattered in Tamil Nadu. Nothing else made news, nothing else was talked about. Not demonetisation, not the by-polls (which her party won), not the imminent failure of the northeast monsoon. Even the illness and hospitalisation of her principal adversary, the nonagenarian DMK supremo Kalaignar Karunanidhi, was
secondary.
And again in illness, as in life, Jayalalithaa was all about rumours. She is gravely ill, whispered some, claiming inside information coming from someone who knows one of the doctors on her team. It is pretty much over for her, only they are not saying it. Rubbish, countered others, again citing her doctors. She is responding well, they affirmed. She is participating in the treatment with incisive questions, comments, suggestions. She is in fact going to come out of the hospital in better health than before and rule for another ten years at least, just watch.
In truth, her doctors, nurses and others on duty at the hospital nary spoke a word. In a very un-Indian display of restraint, no really reliable word came out of the hospital on how Amma fared. That her illness could not really be talked about except in the sequestration of homes or in conspiratorial huddles showed that large numbers of people believed that she or someone on her behalf was listening in on conversations, keeping a tab on who was saying what. There was fear of being reported, but who to? She was ill. The general fear of the supremo, so marked in most political parties and in so many parts of the country, was in full play. Also at work was fears cousin, flattery. Who had the courtesy to come calling, who did not? Industrialists and businessmen made a point of visiting Apollo Hospital and having their names on log. Many called more than once.
All this of course is about Chennai, Chennai vasis and the immediate power centres.
A victor, even in death
For the 80 million people of the state, whether AIADMK supporters, AIADMK opposers or AIADMK-neutral, Ammas battle against illness was yet another example of her willpower, her grit. Even her worst enemy will grant her that. Asadya mano-balam (incredible willpower) was how her three-month long battle with death was viewed. She is a fighter, she is fighting. And she always wins. Even as hopes of her overcoming the multiple complications besetting her receded, her image as a fighter grew. The myth, ever larger than the corporeal scope of life, now grew, acquiring a dimension that belonged to lore rather than reality, legend rather than fact.
She played that final act heroically, even triumphantly. The film actress of decades, the heroine, unbeatable in verve and vivacity, was not going to let death find her meek. Even in dying, she showed herself to be the master of the proceedings. Death became a kind of guest actor. It was kept waiting at her door, like a vassal, an applicant, a petitioner, a strong and wealthy
petitioner, perhaps, but one who had to sit it out till Amma was pleased to let him enter. You may now enter, she finally said.
And it came in meekly, on her terms and in her time, not its own.
The Wire
