By Ayesha Khan 
Chennai, May 11: The oath was done by mid-morning. Vijay had said the words, signed what needed signing, shaken the hands, received the garlands. Tamil Nadu had a new Chief Minister. Sixty years of two-party dominance, cracked open. The crowd inside Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was still buzzing.
And then Trisha Krishnan tried to walk to her car.
What happened in the next four or five minutes is what most of India ended up talking about for the rest of Sunday.
It Got Ugly Fast
She had been perfectly composed through the whole ceremony. Sat near the family, watched everything closely, did not draw attention to herself. She had come with her mother Uma Krishnan and kept a low profile through the event itself, seated near Vijay’s family and close guests.
Outside was a different story entirely.
The moment she stepped out, they were on her. Reporters, fans, cameras, microphones, all of them moving toward her at once. They wanted her reaction. They wanted her to say something about Vijay becoming Chief Minister. They kept asking, kept pushing, kept shoving.
She had to physically hold her saree to keep from stumbling. The crowd was pushing her from every side. There was no bubble of security around her, no proper cordon, nobody really running interference. Just her, her mother, and a wall of people who wanted something from her.
She gave them nothing.
No comment. No reaction. No visible frustration even. Just that smile, the same one through the whole thing, walking steadily toward her vehicle while people shoved and shouted around her.
The ANI camera caught all of it. The video went everywhere within the hour.
Step Back A Minute. This Was Actually A Big Deal Politically.
Because before getting into everything else, the thing that happened inside that stadium deserves its proper credit.
Vijay, the founder of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam, took oath as Chief Minister at 10 in the morning. Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar administered the oath. Nine ministers were sworn in alongside him. Rahul Gandhi was in the crowd. Half of Tamil cinema seemed to be there too.
Vijay is the first Chief Minister of this state since 1967 who comes from neither the DMK nor the AIADMK.
That sentence sounds simple. It is not simple at all. Since 1967 means before most people reading this were born. It means an entire political era defined by just two parties, two families essentially, trading power back and forth while everyone else was background noise. MGR, Jayalalithaa, Karunanidhi, Stalin. That was the only story Tamil Nadu told for nearly six decades.
Vijay walked in and rewrote it.
His alliance of Congress, CPI, CPI(M), VCK and IUML helped him secure 120 seats in the 234-member assembly. Comfortable majority. Still, the Governor wants it confirmed on the assembly floor by Wednesday the 13th. Formality at this point but it needs doing.
What this election actually means for governance, for caste equations in Tamil Nadu, for the Congress alliance nationally, that will take months to properly understand. Sunday was just day one.
So Why Was Trisha There
This is the part that made the video travel as far as it did.
It was not just any celebrity attending a political event. The context around these two has been building since the start of the year.
In February, reports started circulating that Vijay’s wife Sangeeta Sornalingam, his partner of nearly thirty years, had filed for divorce. The reasons cited included infidelity. An unnamed actress was mentioned. Trisha’s name came up almost immediately and stuck.
Then in March, Vijay and Trisha both attended a wedding in Chennai wearing outfits in matching cream and gold. Whether that was coincidence or not, it had people talking for weeks.
Neither of them has addressed any of it publicly. Not once. They have both just continued living their lives and letting the speculation pile up around them.
Now here she is, at the swearing-in, sitting near his family, watching him become Chief Minister.
You can frame that any way you like. Old friends. Film industry colleagues. They have worked together on four films going back decades, Ghilli, Thirupaachi, Kuruvi, Aathi. People from that world attend each other’s important moments. That is normal.
But a swearing-in ceremony is not a film premiere. You do not end up in that room by accident. Someone invites you. You decide to go. You sit where you sit. Every one of those decisions is deliberate, and Trisha is not a naive person. She knew exactly what her presence would mean to every camera in that building.
She went anyway. That choice belongs to her.
The Thing That Deserves More Attention Than It Got
Lost in all the relationship noise is a fairly straightforward question. Why was there no proper security arrangement for guests leaving the venue?
Trisha was pushed around so badly she had to hold onto her own saree to stay on her feet. This was not some chaotic street corner. This was a state government event, a Chief Minister’s swearing-in, with thousands of people and presumably some planning that went into it. Somewhere in that planning, the exit arrangements for guests were either forgotten or handled so badly they might as well have been.
Tamil Nadu knows what crowd mismanagement looks like at its worst. The Karur stampede at a TVK rally last year killed dozens of ordinary people who had come out to see Vijay speak. Families lost people. It was a disaster that should have forced a complete rethink of how these events are run.
Watching Trisha get jostled and pushed trying to reach her vehicle, on the very first day of the government that came out of those elections, you wonder whether anything was actually rethought at all.
Her composure was remarkable. The fact that composure was required is a problem.
Trisha’s The Exit
Teal and gold saree, jasmine in her hair, diamond jewellery, neat bun. She had dressed for a celebration and she got one, followed by a scrum.
She came out of it with her dignity completely intact. Smiling till the end, not a word spoken, not a moment of irritation visible on her face. Got to her car. Left.
The internet had opinions. Of course it did. Most of them were about whether she and Vijay are together. Some were about how lovely the saree was. A few, genuinely a few, were about the security situation.
She did not read any of it, presumably. Or if she did, she is not saying.
Tamil Nadu has a new government and a historic transition to figure out. Vijay has about three days before he has to prove his majority in the house. Real governance, real pressure, real accountability starts almost immediately.
And somewhere in the middle of all that weight, his swearing-in is also the day people will remember for a video of Trisha Krishnan smiling calmly while a crowd pushed her around outside a stadium.
History is rarely tidy. Sunday was not tidy either.
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- Ayesha Khan
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Arun Upadhayay