Tamil Nadu is a foreign country: they do things differently there. People here might ask ‘Modi who?’ or ‘BJP what?’ on Anna Salai in downtown Chennai; Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra are faraway figures, here Ajith and Tamannah Bhatia rule; no signage is in the national language except the sporadic Bharatiya Jeevan Beema; even a so-called state issue (take, for example, the soup Karti Chidambaram is in), is dismissed with a shrug. If cycles for girls can win elections in Bihar, here there is a buzz that Amma may announce free motorcycles; in Bihar, the loss to the exchequer due to prohibition is estimated at Rs 3,000 crore, in Tamil Nadu it would be as much as Rs 30,000 crore. In West Bengal, the month-old Narada sting, showing wads of currency notes of about Rs 3-5 lakhs being pushed into eager MLAs’ hands, is an election issue; here, Rs 10 crore seized in cash last week, allegedly meant for bribing voters, was on the front pages for two days. Here, everything—development, ambition, freebies, corruption, poverty, leaders’ cutouts—is Rajni-size.