New Delhi: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has been in the public eye for more than 50 years, yet very little is known about him outside his home state, apart from the fact that he is the late CM Kalaignar Muthuvel Karunanidhi’s son and successor in the DMK.
In the first volume of his autobiography, ‘One Among You’ (Penguin Viking), translated from the original Tamil (‘Ungalil Oruvan’) by A.S. Paneerselvan, Stalin narrates in conversational prose the story of his first 23 years of his life, from his birth on March 1, 1953, to his arrest under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act on February 1, 1976, when the Emergency was in force across the country.
The volume is studded with stories from his life in those early years, including how he got his name and how because of it, he did not get admission into the school his family wanted him to get into, apart from insights into the cinema and politics of Karunanidhi as well as his relationship with best friend-turned-political rival M.G. Ramachandran (MGR).
