கருக்கிய ஊர் (கரூர்)

Yesterday’s Karur disaster is not fate. It is the direct outcome of South India’s shameful obsession with film and cricket stars. Ordinary lives are routinely sacrificed at the altar of celebrity, and we treat it as normal. Shame on all of us people!!

From MGR to Jayalalithaa, from NTR to Rajkumar, actors have been elevated to demigods. Their deaths unleashed riots, suicides, and stampedes. When Jayalalithaa was jailed or hospitalised, people mutilated themselves in “devotion.” Rajkumar’s death turned Bengaluru into a battlefield. In Hyderabad this year, a woman was killed and a child injured in the chaos around Allu Arjun’s Pushpa 2 premiere—yet fans still cheered him like a god descending. And when RCB won the IPL, Bengaluru saw riots and lives lost—for a franchise team, not even the nation. These are not moments of pride; they are collective humiliations; of public shame. 

What explains this madness? Fatalism. A people convinced their destiny lies not in their own hands but in the grace of stars who live in palaces, far removed from their pain. Instead of demanding jobs, justice, or accountability, South Indians cry at temples built for actors and riot for cricketers. We glorify servitude and call it devotion.

புறநானூறு says

“அறிவுடையார் எல்லாரும் அஞ்சுவர் விதியெனும்

குற்றம் தரும் கூற்றின் அருள்.”

All the wise tremble before fate’s decree,

For destiny strikes without mercy.

But Karur, Pushpa, RCB—these were not destiny. They were the result of people surrendering reason to spectacle. Until this culture breaks, South India will keep bleeding for its stars—while its real problems rot, and its people keep dying in vain.

As the famous Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib confessed, surrendering to fate’s cruelty:

“हज़ारों ख़्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख़्वाहिश पे दम निकले,

बहुत निकले मेरे अरमान, लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले।”

Thousands of desires, each so intense it could kill me;

So many were fulfilled, yet still, too few.