Jayalalithaa watches us from her vantage point. Next to her is Modi; Karunanidhi and Stalin beam at us a little distance away. They are all there at Bunder Street. They smile at us from flags, caps and scarves, and say vanakkam from badges and T-shirts. A month ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, this narrow lane off NSC Bose Road, lined with stationery shops, is as active as ever. Katchi thondargal (party workers) stop by at the shops selling election merchandise to stock up for the campaigns. It is here that erattai ilai (two leaves) and udhaya sooriyan (rising sun) are actually ‘sold’.
“What you see today is nothing compared to 1977,” says Pugazhendhi of Friends Offset Calendars. “The election season was like a thiruvizha . The streets were packed. I wouldn’t have been able to talk to you like today,” he recalls. “Now that the Election Commission has imposed a lot of restrictions, sales is lukewarm.” Their customers are mostly local party workers — Pugazhendi says that parties directly place orders with manufacturers rather than retailers such as themselves.
T-shirts from Tiruppur, flags from Sivakasi, paper holders from Bangalore…these shops stock merchandise from across the country alongside their usual ware for the election season. Balaji Offset Calendars, however, sells campaign merchandise all through the year. Badges are their USP.
At Navrang Stores, manager J. Kuppusami shows us T-shirts with pictures of party leaders on one side and their symbol on the other. “Those were the days,” sighs the 58-year-old. “When MGR contested the elections for the post of chief minister, we did such brisk business. We created products based on the customer’s requirements.” Kuppusami says that shops went to town with party merchandise. “People did flourishing business. But, not so today.” Despite it all, these shops continue to cash in on the election fever.
