In fact, it was the initiative taken by Karunanidhi’s elder son M K Azhagiri that led to the meeting; a surprising development, as it is known that Azhagiri was one of the main forces behind the Maran brothers’ fall from grace a little over a year ago.

“The main reason for the meeting and the person who initiated all this was MK Azhagiri. (Local Administration Minister) MK Stalin also played a role in arranging the meeting,” Karunanidhi told media at the party headquarters. “Eyes welled and hearts swelled,” remarked the patriarch when asked about the first meeting after the bitter estrangement last year.

Karunanidhi’s daughter and Rajya Sabha MP K Kanimozhi was the only absentee, as she is away in Delhi to meet the Prime Minister with the all party MPs delegation on the on-going war in Sri Lanka.

It is well-known that Azhagiri and the Marans fell out after publishing a survey in the latter’s media group that showed Azhagiri in a poor light by giving him a meagre two per cent support from the public as a candidate for carrying on Karunanidhi’s political legacy.

In the recent past when Dayanidhi and Kalanidhi took several efforts to patch up with the State’s first family, it was Azhagiri who did not let them meet Karunanidhi, even after making them wait for long for an appearance once. He leaked this incident to ensure that the brothers did not spread any other information through their media companies about a possible rapprochement.

This friction within the family soon entered business, as Azhagiri launched his own multi-system operation Royal Cable Vision to take on Sun Group’s Sumangali Cable Vision. The situation in Madurai and nearby districts, where Azhagiri’s writs rule, was tense after it was reported that cable operators were threatened to cease transmission of Sun Group channels to the thousands of subscribers.

After the war of words turned bitter and when Karunanidhi himself held no punches back while writing his column in party organ Murasoli on Marans’ ‘betrayal’, rumours were rife that the brothers would turn to another political force like AIADMK or even DMDK to get some political muscle. Now that the family got together - even if for a photo op - those rumours have been laid to rest, at least for now.

In the meanwhile, the Kalaignar TV, DMK’s answer to Sun TV, launched a 24-hour news channel Kalaigner News, apparently to take on the mighty Sun News that has turned a bitter critic of the state Government.