4 minutes reading time
I enjoy Vijay movies. There, I said it.
It's not some high-brow appreciation of the craft. Most of it is objectively terrible, formulaic garbage. But if Kuruvi is on TV, I'll sit through the damn thing, at least parts of it. The chemistry with Vivek, the dumb stunts, the ease with which he moves on screen , it kinda works. It's familiar. He has this charm that makes you forgive the screenwriters for being lazy. I'm not immune to it. Most of Tamil Nadu isn't.
But there's a difference between paying a hundred and fifty rupees to watch a man beat up thirty bad guys in a cinema hall, and handing him the state cabinet.
We're a day away from the election results, and I am shit scared.
I've been watching the campaign trail for the last two months, and it's been a masterclass in pure glamour. DMK is currently shitting its pants.
Look at what we've been applauding.
In Perambur, the campaign vehicle stops. Vijay is inside, and instead of speaking, he starts playing with the interior bus lights. On, off, on, off. The crowd outside goes absolutely wild, screaming like they're at a movie premiere. It's a literal film entry scene staged on a public road, and the fans are eating it up. No talk of policy, no mention of the economy, just a grown man toggling a light switch to trigger mass hysteria.
Then you have the Erode rally in December. Some kid climbs up a speaker tower, risking his life, blowing kisses at the stage. Instead of calling security or telling the idiot to be sensible, Vijay stops the rally. "Come down first, only then will I give you a kiss," he says into the microphone. The kid climbs down, Vijay blows a flying kiss, and the internet erupts. It's peak hero-worship theater.
It's not politics. It's a meet-and-greet with state-wide consequences.
And when the spectacle fails, it gets dangerous.
The Karur stampede in September should have been the moment everyone woke up. Forty-one people died. Let that number sink in. Forty-one lives snuffed out because thirty thousand people tried to cram into a space meant for ten thousand, all trying to get a glimpse of their Vijayna.
And what did the DMK do? Nothing. They were too cowardly to arrest him, terrified of the backlash from his fans. They let it slide, called it an administrative issue, and in doing so, they let TVK shape the narrative.
Now, the fan clubs have turned it into a conspiracy. I was talking to a few college friends last week. Their wives are all voting for Vijay. When I asked why, they didn't talk about TVK's manifesto. They didn't talk about their plan for the state's debt. They just said, "DMK and Senthil Balaji conspired to cause the stampede to destroy Vijay. Why can't you give him a chance? He's done so much charity."
It's a cult. There's no other word for it.
You question their ideology, their philosophy, their plan for governance, and you get nothing but blank stares or scripted defense. "Anna will take care of it." "Give him a chance."
The internet is even worse.
Facebook groups, Instagram reels, are being gooned by coordinated fan accounts. Telegram channels coordinate comment-section pile-ons. If you write anything remotely critical, you get flooded by chinna koothiyans calling you a DMK agent or worse. Women are giving interviews to local YouTube channels crying about how they'd do anything for Vijay.
It feels like a covert jihad of personality worship. It's an aggressive, unthinking mob that has decided that because a man is charming on a screen, he must be competent to run a state with seven crore people.
We had the cycle rallies too. In Karaikudi, he tried to ride a bicycle to show he's a simple man. The crowd surged so violently they almost crushed him, and he had to abandon the cycle and hide inside his caravan. In Kanyakumari, someone threw a ball of flowers at him, his security panicked, and he jumped off the bike like a bomb had gone off. The fans turned it into a meme. "Anna thought it was a bomb." They laugh at the chaos their own hysteria causes.
I don't know what happens when the boxes are opened.
But if one-third of the state has decided to vote based on flying kisses and light switches, we deserve whatever comes next.
I am going to take a shower. The heat is unbearable.