MDMK chief Vaiko was not far behind Robert Bruce who derived his inspiration from the spider. An army of ants kept him engaged during his 19-month stay in the Vellore Jail. ‘‘I often found ants in the chappatis given to me in prison. I managed to fend them off. They got into my shirt hung on the wall and I shook the shirt free of the invaders. But when I took cucumbers offered by my cadres during a court visit to share with other inmates, the ants were there again promptly. This time they managed to sneak into the slices by climbing up a small broomstick.’’ Vaiko’s moral of the story: If ants are so tenacious, so could the MDMK in its determination to serve the people of Tamil Nadu.
