In certain parts of north India, to offer a guest a drink of freshly drawn milk is a sign of the highest honour. Down south, they have put a different spin on the practice, to honour movie stars.
Before dawn on the release dates of major movies, fans furtively fan out across the state of Tamil Nadu in search of milk depots to raid. The produce is fresh, wholesome and suitable for spraying on images of the stars, straight out of the polypack. This ritual, drawn to the secular space from religious tradition, glories in the name of paal abhishekam.
The paal (milk) issue boiled over this week, when the Tamil actor Simbu exhorted his fans to freely spray his cutouts for the release of his latest film. Earlier, he had been reformist and urged them to do their parents a good turn to celebrate the release, instead of putting up cutouts and dousing them in milk.
The unkind said that he did this because paal abhishekam would have exposed his poor following, in comparison to that of Kamal Haasan or Rajinikanth, and he changed his mind to prove them wrong. But this is the first time that a star has actually exhorted fans, and it is a tipping point. Now, the state milk dealers’ association has asked the police to ban both cutouts — as distinctive a feature of the state as the Mamallapuram shore temple — and the milk ceremony. They also want police protection for milk outlets in the wee hours on release dates.
Would this dampen the ardour of fans in a cinema-mad state with a celluloid pantheon? Not necessarily. Paal abhishekam is a fairly new phenomenon, and fans would just fall back on an even older practice — showering the silver screen with fistfuls of coins when their stars appear.
