He returned from US to serve India. Tamil Nadu election result left him broken

Ayyasamy joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and was appointed district president of Tenkasi. For the next four years, he immersed himself completely in grassroots work across villages such as Subramaniapuram and Vellanaikottai.

In Short

• Ayyasamy left a successful US career to enter public service in India
• As BJP’s Tenkasi chief, he spent four years on village work
• He funded ponds, bus shelters, camps, workshops and youth activities

When Ananthan Ayyasamy decided to leave behind a successful life in the United States and return to India, it was not ambition that brought him home — it was conviction.

A former Engineering Director at Intel in the US, a successful entrepreneur in the tech and real estate sectors, and a man with multiple patents to his name, Ayyasamy walked away from a life many only dream of.

But the hardest part of that decision was not giving up wealth or comfort.

It was sitting down with his 12-year-old daughter and telling her that her father was leaving. He told her he was returning to India for public service and politics — to work for the people of his homeland, to build opportunities for the youth, and to transform Tenkasi into a hub of innovation and growth.

At that age, she did not fully understand what “public life” meant.

Years later, she would.

Ayyasamy joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and was appointed district president of Tenkasi. For the next four years, he immersed himself completely in grassroots work across villages such as Subramaniapuram and Vellanaikottai.

He helped build bus shelters, restore a 100-acre pond, strengthen water bunds, remove invasive seemai karuvelam trees and plant thousands of palm saplings. He organised medical camps, supported students, conducted career workshops, encouraged sports among youth, built community sheds and contributed to annadanams.

But those efforts came at a personal cost.

“It cost several ten lakhs of hard-earned money — just for this village alone. But more than money, it cost time family moments and precious years watching my daughter grow up from far away,” he wrote in a deeply emotional social media post.

Ayyasamy hoped his years of service would help his party politically. But when the election results came, the BJP and its alliance failed to win any Assembly seat in Tenkasi district.

“In the end, one week of election-time money defeated four years of sincere service,” he wrote.

In the Tenkasi Assembly constituency, Kalai Kathiravan of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam defeated AIADMK candidate S Selva Mohandas Pandian by 10,299 votes.

Then came the moment that broke him.

After the elections, his daughter called him on a video call and quietly asked: “Appa can you now tell me what exactly politics is?”

“For the first time in my life, I did not have an answer for my chellaponnu,” he wrote.

Yet, despite the heartbreak, Ayyasamy’s larger dream remains unchanged.

Beyond politics, he founded TenSemi.com, a semiconductor-focused initiative aimed at nurturing high-tech talent and innovation, VoiceofTenkasi.org and Vaazhai.org — initiatives focused on technology, social awareness and regional development. His vision, as outlined on Ananthan Ayyasamy’s website, is ambitious: creating one lakh high-tech jobs in Tenkasi by 2032 and transforming the region into a centre for skills, innovation and sustainable growth.

For now, however, a father’s silence after his daughter’s question says more about politics than any election speech ever could.

- Ends