“We have been holding the crew and the equipments here at a high rent for all these days counting on the assurance given by the Tourism Minister. It's very unfortunate; we were looking forward to perform in front of our hometown crowd,” says Mikhil, founder-member of Ghost Ryderz.

Since the Emerging Kerala meet is to be held at Kochi, naturally it won't make any sense to hold the event in Trivandrum. So, the capital city stands to lose a major crowd-pulling event to Kochi. By having succeeded in making a handful of private citizens turn away an innovative idea and further thrusting them with losses for the efforts they took, Kerala marches confidently into the Emerging Kerala global investor meet, where it hope to lure in prospective investors to help modernise the state.

But Karthikeyan won't be driving the F1 car in Kochi either.“The Formula 1 season is over; we would be trying to bring in a GP2 series car, which is almost similar to a F1 car,” Jose said.

As everything gets back to square one for yet another time in the city, the ones heaving the silent sigh of relief are the corporation authorities. Karthikeyan's event would have been a huge crowd puller but considering the present status of the waste crisis, the tons of litter and waste left behind could have been too much for the corporation to handle in a single day.