Fertiliser Minister MK Alagiri is now participating in cabinet meetings and attending parliament. What made him change his ways? It was only recently that the opposition had to complain about his absence in parliament.

Well, the insider story is that when the minister said he would contest for the post of the DMK president in case of elections, his father, party supremo and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi decided to suspend him and got a disciplinary notice drafted too. Playing the trump card, Karunanidhi even let Alagiri know about the action being contemplated.

In his rivalry with MK Stalin, deputy chief minister and the other claimant to the top party post, Alagiri has realised that his Fertiliser Ministry is his sole asset. If he was suspended, his followers including MPs and MLAs would desert him to the other camp. So now he spends more than three hours a day in his ministry office at Shastri Bhavan.

He has also begun to learn English pronunciation. Learning Hindi is also on the agenda. In the central Hall in front of many DMK MPs, he asked the canteen bearer: “Aaj ki khaana menu kya hai”, leaving many senior MPs wondering about his quick learning. He keeps a few Hindi and English phrases written in Tamil script ready in his pocket.