Dear Mr.Jawahar
Your experiences with Thalaivar and TMM are really interesting and contains lot of infos.
Im sure you would have participated in TMM's rally in chennai in the year 1989 to coincide with his 60 th birthday. I was fortunate enough to take part in the rally boarding a van which had Trichy NT fans.
What a grand rally it was!!!!. I think the crowd was a massive one which would have easily touched about 2lacs. It began from periamet and passed via mount road, RK salai and ended in marina beach. NT along with family and party functioneries witnessed the rally at a specially erected dias near Musci Academy. The rally took 7 hours to reach the final venue at Marina beach. ( It began around 2.00pm and ended at 9.00 pm)
Then there was a massive public meeting which was inagurated by Shri.Krupanandha variar. The meeting was also attended by AIADMK (Janaki faction) leaders.
This rally shook the whole of TN and Chennai in particular and all the major political parties were surprised at Thalaivar's mass base and the capacity to organise such a massive rally within months of starting a political party.
In fact I came to know from an interview of Major sunderrajan that DMK was willing to give TMM around 20seats and undertake all election expenses. But our Thalaivar had politely rejected the offer saying that he came out of Congress for thier betrayal to MGR's wife Janaki's Government and it is only logical and dharma to have alliance with Janaki faction. It is also a well known fact that he spent from his pocket for running the party and for election related expenses.
How many poltical leaders will this courage and conscious to do this???
As rightly indicated by Mr.Murali Srinivas, Thalaivar's fans are out in the open now with more vigour and enthu and i pray God that we get a good leader to lead Thalaivar's padai.
Regards
Shivram