A platform for the common man at Chennai’s Panagal Park

In this season of speeches, a recollection of an initiative at this park in T. Nagar that promised anyone who turned up, a patient five-minute hearing

Here is a recurring image of the season. From a jacked-up platform on a modified vehicle, a leader towers roof and shoulders over the common man and seeks to win him over. It calls to mind another speaking platform, from another era, and serving a wholly different purpose. At 1.5 feet above terra firma, it was hardly an imposing platform. Its other dimensions — 3 feet long and 1.5 feet broad — did not make it any grander. No leader stood atop this makeshift wooden platform, only the common man. When actor Karan, as chief guest, inaugurated this speaking platform — Soap Box Exnora — on a Sunday at Panagal Park in July 1999, it promised the common man a 5-minute hearing, as long as he kept politics, religion and socially unacceptable ideas and discussions out of it. “Founder and Chairman of Exnora International MB Nirmal launched the initiative here, as he was impressed with how the Soap Box at Hyde Park, London had promoted a culture of public speaking and sharing of ideas in that land,” says Ponkalaimani, who was president of Panagal Park Soap Box Exnora, and also co-coordinator of Soap Box Exnora. The initiative engineered a broad definition of “the common man”.