Watching Rio match was a stress buster

After holding a mock assembly session under the trees earlier in the day, Leader of Opposition MK Stalin and seven other MLAs quietly retired to the former’s room in Anna Arivalayam in the evening. What followed next was something that really intrigued even a few at the DMK headquarters. 

Anxious Arivalayam staff who had thought that their leaders, deputy LoP Duraimurugan, MLAs EV Velu, Thangam Thennarasu and Ponmudi were discussing the party’s next course of action in the Assembly were taken aback when sounds of fist thumping and bench tapping came out. 

Then it dawned on them that the leaders were cheering PV Sindhu in action against Spaniard Carolina Marin in the gold medal badminton match in Rio.

Sources who were witness to the incident told DTNext that they were surprised by the outburst of emotion in the room. MLAs, who were mostly in their 50s and 60s, were banging the benches in jubilation and yelling in disappointment for every point Sindhu won and lost.

“We didn’t know that they knew badminton so much. We were surprised to hear them talk about technicalities of badminton,” an eyewitness told this paper. 

Former school education minister Thangam Thennarasu is understood to have rightly predicted the Spaniard’s win even in the first few minutes of the match.