The campaigning style of Anant Nag, Krishna's rival, is different from that of Krishna and family. The one thing Krishna, Nag and Chandru have in common is that none of them actually live in Chamrajpet.

Nag travels every morning by autorickshaw from his beautiful home in Rajamahal second stage, at the other end of town, to Chamrajpet. He is out there making eye contact with his voters from 9 am all through the day till the evening. He does not hesitate to do things like walk into a barber's shop, pull the blade out of the barber's hand and appeal to the customer he is shaving for a vote.

"I had no intention of contesting this time," says Nag, who was away shooting for a sequel to the popular television serial Malgudi Days directed by Kavitha Lankesh when Deve Gowda called him up and asked him to stand against Krishna.

Nag's wife Gayathri (Sharma), herself a former leading lady of the Kannada screen, and his daughter Aditi, are now away on a short holiday in the Middle East. So Nag is on his own, campaigning for himself.

Nag was a minister in the Janata Dal government in Karnataka five years ago, and was a longstanding friend of the late chief minister J H Patel. He and his brother Shankar Nag, who directed Malgudi Days and died in a car accident 14 years ago, were both supporters of the Janata Party and Janata Dal right from the 1980s.

"I have been sent to you by V P Singh and Deve Gowda," says Nag to his voters, as he walks the narrow bylanes of Chamrajpet.

Photograph: B K Ramesh