In his birthday message, Karunanidhi asked the youth "to make every sacrifice to redeem the four pillars of democracy."
As Karunanidhi celebrated his 93rd birthday on Friday, young and old DMK cadre thronged the party headquarters to greet their chief.
Some young people like Venkatesh Kumar went out of their way to draw Mr Karunanidhi's attention. This youth from Kolathur had styled his hair in the shape of a rising sun, the party's symbol. The cropped hair is even embossed with the letters DMK. "I'm proud of my party and the leader," he said.
There were special gifts for the grand old man of Indian politics. 70-year-old Vaiko Rajan had travelled hundreds of kilometres with a box full of cashews. His box has even a few miniature party flags. He said, "I love my leader and these are top quality nuts for him."
The regular currency garland for the leader was missing this time. But he was gifted a crown and a sceptre. Most party workers gifted a shawl to their leader.
82-year-old Rajamanickam from Vellore was undeterred waiting for his date with Mr Karunanidhi. He said, "I've not missed even a single birthday of Kalaignar since 1949."
In his birthday message, Mr Karunanidhi exhorted the youth "to make every sacrifice to redeem the four pillars of democracy."
Coming just two weeks after the DMK's defeat in the assembly polls, many leaders see this as an occasion to motivate the cadre for the upcoming local body polls. DMK Spokesperson A Saravanan said, "Our party and our leaders are in the hearts of people. Only because of the biased Election Commission we lost. Our leader's birthday has charged our cadre to work towards sweeping local body polls."
But many say Mr Karunanidhi himself has many reasons to be happy about. One leader said "We've emerged as the strongest ever opposition party; our leader won with a record margin of 68,000 votes and got elected for the 13th time consecutively."