Amma isn't the blessed one yet in her temple town

It is billed as a David versus Goliath battle by a media ever hungry to coin the next turn of phrase, but a visit to Srirangam, foremost among Vaishnavite Brahmin pilgrimage centres, shows there is neither a David nor a Goliath in the fray.

Jayalalithaa, the former chief minister, the only leader from the All India Anna Dravida Munnera Kazhagam and the woman everyone expects to displace the current Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam regime in Fort St George -- is an absentee candidate. Unlike Goliath, she has not been visible much.

Yes, no one expects her to lose a seat which has elected more AIADMK legislators than otherwise. Still, the voting public does not look at the past while casting its ballot but the future. And not necessarily the candidate's future, but their own.

"Who is this Jayalalithaa? What has she done? What will she do for us?"

These are two questions that the few I spoke to in the agraharams (the streets around the temple where only Brahmins live) and inside the Ranganathaswamy temple asked repeatedly.

Perhaps because this time the battle has been given an extra hue of interest as her ancestral home was supposedly in Srirangam, before the family migrated to Karnataka (she is a Kannadiga Iyengar).

Divyaprabandham (the Vaishnavite sacred hymns sung by the Azhvars) classes are in progress, boys are playing street cricket, there is no sign of any celebrity.

"Aiyo sir, she is not from this Srirangam, but from Srirangapatina, near Mysore sir. Paarunga (look), everyone knows she is a Kannadiga, if she was from here she will be a Tamilian, ille (no)?"

Clearly, the upper caste votes won't come easy to the candidate from the Mutharaiyar community (OBCs), nor does he seem to care.

For his own people form the bulk of the town's population. With around 25 per cent of the vote expected to stay with him, Anand's supporters believe he may be a political novice, an 'outsider' (contrasted with his lady opponent's roots in the town), but no pushover.

Unlike the other side which believes the election is already done and dusted in its favour, the DMK candidate is leaving nothing to chance. He moves among the hamlets and settlements at a frenetic pace that is difficult to keep pace with even if you are on wheels, he makes it a point to mingle with the population, and is greeted with the traditional aarti in hut after hut he calls on.

Oratory aside (in a party given to Tamil efflorescence, surely that cannot be a plus point), even simple exhortations to vote for him or the party didn't escape his lips. The rabble-rousing is being done by others, evidently given to hyperbole.

The urging to vote was not in Anand's name, but in the DMK's and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's name. 'For that alone will ensure ponnaana aatchi (golden rule).'

In contrast, the AIADMK's campaign, launched near the temple last week, was invisible on the streets of Srirangam. A few hours spent surely cannot be an effective barometer for gauging campaign effects, but the somnolence is visible.