V S Achuthanandan did not always communicate with words alone. He had other ways. It could be a grunt or an aimless gaze. Sometimes it would be mere silence. Even the pace of his stride carried hints. A lesser politician would have found it complex, but VS mastered it like he owned it. In the two-way communication, nothing appealed to him more than the slogans.

When he walked out of Alappuzha party state conference in 2015 after he differed with the official faction, he didn’t say much. All he did was stay in his house for the rest of the day, cancel the press meet and remain tight-lipped. Not a word, and still he delivered the message. By noon, his supporters assembled around the house, shouting slogans. The leaders sensed danger and pacifiers were soon deputed to defuse the situation.

A year later, Malampuzha was sizzling. A British documentary maker who arrived in Palakkad couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer spirit and energy of a 92-year-old candidate. VS was game for the 4th turn in the constituency. He lit up the campaign venues as comrades shouted slogans at the top of their lungs. ‘Kanne, Karale VSe, nammude chankile rosa poove’ (Dear comrade, you are our eyes and rose of our hearts). The slogan simply stuck with every generation and though VS grew older, the slogans only grew louder.

It was only fitting that youths huddled together in front of the AKG study and research centre on Monday night and repeated the slogans that had made a grand old comrade feel younger. Some of the women who carried children waited outside the AKG centre after they had paid their tribute. They handed over their kids to spouses, held their fists tightly and raised slogans, matching in pitch and tone of the new breed of VS supporters.

“I came from Thumba in the evening, waited in the queue to see him one last time. We grew up listening to his speeches and those days shouting slogans when he arrived at venues was a special feeling. VS would not have wanted a better farewell,” said Aneesh, a central government employee who came with his wife and son.

As slogans rent the air, two migrant labourers rolled their push carts to sell peanuts. They saw a crowd and sensed business. Some of the people gave them a look, but nobody turned them away. They knew that inside the AKG centre lay a man who chose battles nobody else cared for, who accommodated people others ignored. The clank of the vessel got drowned in the slogans. As the lines became shorter and the crowd thinned, the announcement came that the body was being shifted to his house. The slogans were paused for a while.

The groups merged into one and circled the hearse. When the body was laid inside the vehicle, they gave way. One more time, they got together to shout slogans for Achuthanandan and they parted. “I heard these slogans for the first time in 2006 when the party denied him an assembly seat. The entire state rose in slogans in support of VS and from a man who was denied the seat, he went on to become Kerala’s Chief Minister,” a veteran journalist recalled.