Those were the lines of a teaser campaign that ran several decades ago to introduce Superman. The Man from Madras Musings could not help reflecting on this when he saw the memorial of our State’s own Superwoman being unveiled. Mind you MMM must issue a clarification here that he did not share in the popular sentiment of the lady being a Superwoman but her followers made her out to be one and who knows, maybe she believed in it herself. But there is no denying that she was a person with enormous capability.
The powers that be have it that what is depicted is a phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its ashes. MMM does not see any resemblance, not that he has ever seen a real phoenix, excepting the mall that goes by that name of course. To MMM the structure does not look like anything other than a warplane just about to take off. This may not be entirely inappropriate, for the lady concerned was a fighter all her life. MMM also sees much poetic justice in all of this. The old man, he of rising son fame, had built what he thought was a lasting memorial to himself, viz the new legislative assembly and secretariat building. The mater dei of Tamil Nadu politics, namely the personality who now lies in eternal rest under the phoenix like plane or plane like phoenix had once famously dismissed that grand edifice as a circus tent. It must have caused old man enormous distress though MMM cannot but reflect that even he, the old man that is, must have seen the logic behind such a description. Now in a comeuppance of sorts, the lady who fought against daddy, howdy and others has an outlandish memorial to herself. It is a pity the old man is not around to see it. He lies not far removed and may for all we know even now be quaking in fear over what kind of a memorial will come up over him. After all, it was he who began the practice of strange-shaped tombs, building the first of the series for his mentor also known as Elder Brother.
The above phoenix/plane was unveiled last month in what can only be described as a glorious ceremony, as befitting Gloriana herself. She would have loved the pomp and circumstance though what our frontline health workers thought of the crowds that gathered is another matter. As the newspapers are fond of writing, thousands lined the streets, as presumably did a similar number of Covid viruses.
And then, the memorial was ordered closed almost immediately after it was thrown open. The ostensible reason is that some more time was needed for getting some special displays added (if so why was it inaugurated at all?) but as everyone knows, the real reason lay elsewhere, somewhere near Bengaluru. MMM imagines that the structure is now being tested for ability to withstand a second set of three solid whacks.
Marina, a beach the size of which ought to be pristine and a blessing to a city which dwells alongside is turned by the powers that seems to be a curse of the state, into a site of memorials of competing odd shapes and dimensions for political figures of the past, while the waters that lash the beach relentlessly have turned blackish and dirty and the sand that defines a beach, seems to reducing continously as if pained by the assault on it.
Pity seems to be that, neither the Rising Sun or the mantle that is being passed without break to Sons associated with it or the Couple of Leaves seemingly indicating competing leadership or another Son of a once formidable party now again caught between Son and Mother, provide any hope and black seems more appealing to the state than Saffron and of the last mentioned, even MMM has no love lost. What hope for the state of the state ? Nothing to state.