A wardrobe ‘malfunction’ has political meaning

In the age of microscopic media scrutiny, MLAs need to pay as much attention to his/her choice of attire as the contents s/he delivers in the House. Any oversight in this matter could easily embarrass the legislator, like it did with the saffron party’s MLA from Coimbatore Vanathi Srinivasan.

Vanathi usually plans her public appearances meticulously but was caught off guard on Monday when she turned up wearing a black sari for the budget debate, unaware of the Congress MLAs plan to sport a black shirt/sari to the House in protest of their leader Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification. And she paid the price for what was a mere coincidence.

As if the sarcastic comments and enquiries of her colleagues in the Assembly Hall was not embarrassing enough, a sharp-witted Speaker M Appavu loudly wondered on the mike, “Have you (Vanathi) worn a black sari in solidarity with Congress MLAs who have come to register their protest against their leader’s disqualification?”

An equally witty Vanathi did the balancing act by declaring that she dressed in black to register her condemnation for the suffering the ruling party (DMK) leaders had endured during the infamous emergency days in the past. However, her discomfiture did not end there.

She went through another round of public unease moments later when she accompanied her party MLAs to the anxious media centre for a briefing. Lensmen went berserk trying to capture an image of her standing next to her Congress colleagues, all the while sporting a black sari and a smile.

— Karthikeyan K