When director Atlee put Vijay in a tracksuit and asked him to assemble a dysfunctional football team in the 2019 Tamil blockbuster ‘Bigil’ (whistle), few imagined it would double as a political instruction manual.
This week, C Joseph Vijay — now chief of the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) — has been running the same drill on a different pitch, chasing not a national championship but the chief minister’s oath, and finding that coalition politics is every bit as chaotic as Atlee’s plot for the movie.
The arithmetic looks deceptively simple.
- Tamil Nadu’s 234-member Assembly requires 118 for a majority. TVK won 108 seats — the single largest mandate in a hung house.
- After Vijay’s victory from two constituencies (he must vacate one), the effective tally sits at 107.
- The shortfall is 11, the number of players you need to field a football team. Legally, he can do with 10, too, as the total voting members for a trust vote will also come down to 233 since Vijay cannot vote twice despite having two seats.
Reluctant recruits
In ‘Bigil’, coach Michael’s recruits arrive with baggage — some with a grievance, a demand, a wound she must be talked through before she laces her boots. The government formation drama has been as identical as can be.
The Congress arrived first, five seats in hand, but with a condition attached: Vijay must never ally with “communal forces”, a reference to the BJP and its senior partner AIADMK in the state. Some reliable show-up-and-do-the-job players came next, in the CPI and CPI(M) with two seats each. Both gave “outside support”, again citing the need to prevent a “backdoor entry” of the Centre’s ruling BJP via President’s Rule if a government is not formed by May 10.
That took Vijay’s confirmed tally to two short of 118.
Star player who won’t sign, and other twists
In Atlee’s film, the most talented player is always the hardest to convince. VCK’s Thol Thirumavalavan has played that role with some ambiguity all week. His party holds just two seats, the cushion Vijay needs. VCK deputy general secretary Vanni Arasu publicly demanded a deputy chief minister’s post before any formal support letter would be issued.
Friday was a day of twists, a surreal turn before the interval, leading up to a finale at some point.
An X account using VCK’s name posted a letter of support, then deleted the tweet and the account disappeared too within the hour.
Vijay had it; then did not.
His character Coach Michael bellowed at his squad in ‘Bigil’: “Don’t play for the name on the back of your t-shirt!” He wanted them to be a team, not individuals.
Another DMK camp member, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), added its own twist, initially signalling support to Vijay, before saying it was all a rumour.
No Indian movie screenplay is complete without a character twisting the plot from within. AMMK chief TTV Dhinakaran stepped into that role with relish, accusing TVK supporters of circulating a forged letter claiming his party’s lone MLA had joined Vijay’s side. He called it “a mockery of democracy”, even wrote to the Governor backing AIADMK’s Edappadi K Palaniswami.
Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar — meeting Vijay thrice in three days without a formal invitation to form the government — has some parallels with the top football association official in ‘Bigil’, playing the institutional gatekeeper who demands paperwork before the team can even take the field. No written proof from 118 MLAs, no whistle.
Penalty shootout
Team Tamil Nadu does not win the national championship in ‘Bigil’ through a commanding, dominant performance. Vijay, known among fans as Thalapathy or ‘commander’, won handsomely on May 4; but not quite enough.
The ‘Bigil’ women’s team wins on penalties. As does the team in Shahrukh Khan-starrer ‘Chak De! India’, the 2007 Bollywood movie that in part inspired Vijay’s 63rd film.
By Saturday morning, reports indicated VCK had finally submitted its support letter, pushing Vijay’s tally past 118. A press conference was expected later in the day.
Whether Vijay the politician can hold his patchwork coalition together long enough to actually govern is, as any Tollywood fan will recognise, always the sequel’s problem.
At one point Vijay wanted to join the Congress, HT has reported — another parallel of sorts to how Vijay’s character Michael alias Bigil wanted to become a football player, only to traverse through a world of filmy crime and end up as the main man eventually.