On 14th Jan., I attended the 40th Annual Function of the Tamizh weekly magazine Thuglaq. I have been wanting to attend this for the past couple of years, but have stayed away primarily due to the seating problems that are reported everytime.
This time around, my friend Raj was able to procure special tickets (reserved ones that were 2 rows from the stage), through his contacts. Yet, we had to be in our seats some 2 hours before the program started!
This year around, there were no special invitees, but one could still see lot of famous faces in the auditorium. I saw BJP leaders L.Ganeshan and Pon.Radhakrishnan. Ramagopalan of Hindu Munnani was also present. Then there were writers of Thuglaq like Paza.Karuppaiah, Indian Express Gurumurthy, I.A.S (retd.) Murugan and Advocate Vijayan. Singer Aruna Sairam was present too. So was cinema director K.Balachander.
The event started off with Cho addressing the gathering in his inimitable style. The whole evening witnessed speaker after speaker launch into tirades about how callous the entire system - administration, judiciary, economy and of course politics - had become. Many of this has been written in many editions of the magazine itself and hearing it in person from these illustrious people was an amazing experience.
Probably because this year is not an election year, there was no new rhetoric, but I am waiting to attend the event next year.
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