PALAKKAD: It’s about 1pm. Blazing heat leaves the streets of Palakkad almost deserted. But the UDF’s constituency committee office near the Indira Gandhi Municipal Stadium is anything but quiet.
Congress workers move in and out with cutouts of actor-turned-politician Ramesh Pisharody, dispatching them with a sense of urgency.
Inside a corner cabin, DCC secretary C Balan — ‘Balettan’ to party workers — sits surrounded by local Congress leaders, all pressing to secure the candidate’s presence in their wards. Voices overlap. Balan listens, argues, redraws routes. Time is short, and every ward matters.
Pisharody, meanwhile, spends the first half of the day outside the district, meeting leaders across political and religious lines. By 4pm, he heads back to the campaign trail — boarding a KSRTC bus from Palakkad town to Kuzhalmannam, his birthplace, accompanied by AICC general secretary K C Venugopal.
Moving down the aisle, Pisharody greets passengers, hands out pamphlets, and slips effortlessly into humour. He highlights the UDF’s promise of free bus travel for women.
After a 30-minute ride, the campaign team alights as the bus reaches Kuzhalmannam Highway Junction. Addressing the media, he brushes aside confrontations with the BJP’s Mahila Morcha, saying “let the people decide who is right and wrong”.
Though Kuzhalmannam falls outside the constituency, a small crowd gathers quickly. A just-married couple slows down to greet him from their car. Some college girls approach, and then retreat in confusion, laughing. Pisharody smiles back.
“You should have contested from here,” someone calls out.
“If the party decides, I will contest from anywhere in Kerala,” Pisharody replies.
Back in the Palakkad constituency at 5.15pm, a public meeting unfolds on a ground barely 50m from the Thanneerangadu branch canal — built for irrigation, now lying dry. “We face a drinking water crisis. Roads in the interior areas are in a terrible condition,” says Asharaf, a mutton stall owner watching from the sidelines. “We need an MLA who will work for us.”
On stage, Venugopal lays out the UDF manifesto. Then comes Pisharody — reclaiming the stage with the confidence of a seasoned performer.
His speech is brisk, laced with humour. He targets the NDA over religious polarisation and the LDF over corruption. Drawing from cinema, he simplifies political arguments into sharp, relatable lines.
At one point, as someone approaches him on stage, he quips, “I thought he had come to block me!”
A team of Congress observers from north India watches closely, encouraged by the crowd’s response. But the real moment comes after the speech.
As Pisharody steps down, a large crowd of women and children gathers around him. Some wait to speak, others queue up for photos. He stays back, engaging patiently.
Pisharody’s speech lasts barely 10 minutes. The interaction that follows stretches far longer. And therein lies a message.