The script is in place. The special effects are done. Where’s the hero? He just has to turn up for the happy ending.

Meanwhile the bijli goes off, then comes back. The sadak is in a bad shape so Kumaranna is hele-hopping. People sip mineral pani and wait for the speck in the sky. Which finally appears over the Nandi Hills and lands on an engineering college ground. Hi-tech education has its uses.

Kumaraswamy is welcomed with a mega garland fit for the Bamian Buddha. Soon enough he is helped out of this floral girdle by local bigwigs who have scrambled on to the dais. They form a cheek-by-jowl arc behind him as he begins to speak. He recaps what was heard in the past couple of hours. A straight sober delivery, contained gestures, no feisty aerobics, a meek wave of the hand, and tentative finger pointing… Can’t tell with whom you’ll have to work post-poll.

Yet he must throw in a little masala. After all, it is an election speech. “Who are these big guys of national politics? Congress chief Indira Gandhi in her hard days post-Emergency didn’t go to Uttar Pradesh. She came here to Chikmagalur to find her way back into Parliament. And the BJP? Venkaiah Naidu says the Janata Dal is dead and all it has are the four pall bearers. Deve Gowda is alive and kicking. How hard Naidu will soon know.”

Kumaraswamy doesn’t have to pause for effect. The crowd cheers him on. “A captive crowd,” whispers my pro-Congress driver and quickly adds, “Every party manages crowds. Only film star Ambareesh draws a real one.” Mobilised or not, the gathering here looks the sort that can even fool the exit pollster. Mostly well-clad—men in bush shirts and trousers, women in neatly pressed saris or embroidered burkhas—they are too polite and orderly to reveal their mind. Chikbalapur, their new district constituted by the last Kumaraswamy government, is right between Hyderabad and Bangalore, both developmental nodes. These people have evidently felt the pull. The place has vineyards, some industry and an engineering college. Where a humble farmer’s son can land in style.