Maverick Vijay

On the last day of campaigning for the Tamil Nadu election, actor-turned-politician Joseph Vijay was scheduled to address a public meeting at the YMCA Ground in Chennai.

- N.K. Bhoopesh

The meeting was slated for 4 pm, but women across age groups and scores of youngsters started arriving at 2 pm. Among them was Karthika, an undergraduate student and an ardent fan of “Thalapathy”. Asked what prompted her, as a first-time voter, to support Vijay, her answer was: “We want change.” When pressed to explain, Karthika struggled to articulate it in political terms. For her, change simply meant Vijay.

The yearning for change ultimately proved epochal. The six-decade dominance of Dravidian politics lay shattered as Vijay has marched into Fort St. George, the seat of power that houses the Tamil Nadu secretariat.

For Vijay, cinema was almost a predetermined destiny. At the age of nine, he was cast as a child actor in Vetri—a film produced and directed by his father, S.A. Chandrasekhar. Before graduating to lead roles and cementing his place as one of Tamil cinema’s leading stars, he appeared in several of Chandrasekhar’s films as a child artist.