"Who has given cycles to poor students, tell me?" Gandhimathy pushed 17-year-old Sasirekha, a class XI student to the front and answered, "She was given a cycle by Amma."
Sasirekha proudly posed for a photograph on her proud possession, the new cycle. "Amma gives scholarships to good students who are poor. I will surely win a scholarship and then study engineering," she said.
Kavitha jumped on Sasirekha's bicycle and declared, "I too will get a cycle when I reach Plus 1 (class XI). Like Sasi akka (sister), I too will become an engineer."
"What about Dayanidhi?" I managed to ask the group that had gathered around me.
"What experience does he have? Just because he was Murasoli Maran's son, he was given the ticket. There are good people in the DMK like K Anbazhagan. Why was he not given a ticket?" Vijaya asked.
Vijaya said she had been voting for the DMK all these years but this year, she would vote 'differently'.
"There is going to be a change," some women yelled out.