Women, kids raise the pitch in city

A group of 35 women and their children were holding colourful banners, shouting slogans to save jallikattu, between 3 pm to 5 pm at Vijayanagar bus stop in Velachery. They were members of Wondermoms, a social media support group for mothers, protesting the ban on jallikattu. 

Sudha P R, a member of the group, said, “We are protesting for the future, since the ban on jallikattu will affect the next generation too. We took our children to the rally as well. The protest was organised in Velachery as well as Nageshwara Rao Park and near Citi Centre mall in Mylapore. We had about 35 mothers with their children at each of these locations. We wanted to voice our support to this cause,” the design professional added. 

Residents of Chitalapakkam too took to the streets, for the past few days, taking turns to manage the crowd and provide water to the protesters. Sunil Jayaram, a resident, said 50 per cent of the crowd present in their area comprised women and children. “Though many are not aware of the issue in-depth, they feel that the tradition of jallikattu belongs to them. The judiciary doesn’t have a right to take away their tradition. We have no leader and people are taking turns to shout slogans, buy water and regulate traffic. We will have close to 400 people joining our protest at the end of the day,” he added. 

Sudharsan Mohan, a communications professional, said that college students from Alandur protested in their locality while TANSI Nagar residents too showed up in large numbers in their area. However, the protests erupting across the city led to some unpleasant experiences for those commuting by road. Juhi Sharma, a citybased cinematographer, recounted, “I was travelling from Cathedral Road to Nungambakkam, which was full of hooligans stopping and diverting traffic and banging on the windows of cars. Men were triple riding on bikes, yelling and screaming. It was  chaotic.”