Reporter’s Diary: How Durga Stalin made mends with her in-laws

People in Gopalapuram were understood to have expressed their reservation to Durga Stalin not extending a ‘proper’ invitation for the release of her book Avarum Naanum, an 800-page compilation of an autobiographical series she had written in a Tamil magazine. Durga Stalin was understood to have sent the invitation for the event to Gopalapuram through Tamil writer Tamilachi Thangapandian, sister of former DMK minister Thangam Thennarasu and daughter of deceased DMK leader Thangapandian.

A few members of the Karunanidhi clan, however, did not like the invitation being sent through an ‘outsider’. When Durga Stalin had got Karunanidhi’s autograph inked in the half-title page on her husband’s birthday, family members in Gopalapuram were learnt to have murmured that she could have done it earlier – inviting thalaivar in person instead of deputing people before the book was released. Grapevine had it that Durga Stalin had presented her book to father-in-law Karunanidhi only to make amends for the earlier goof up. 

Durga also took special care to present the book to mother-in-law Dayalu Ammal and got the same photographed. The debutante writer had also made it a point to take her son Udayanidhi - something Stalin had not done in his previous birthdays - understandably to bury the hatchet.