A quiet house on East Chitra street in the Temple town of Srirangam is having its Peepli Live moment, with media crews and AIADMK supporters beating a path to its door, all on the assumption that 93-year-old Kamala paati is related to AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa.

While Jayalalithaa was brought up in Mysore, her mother, actress Sandhya had visited her distant cousins in Srirangam as a child, and it is this connection which is being touted as a reason why Jayalalithaaa chose this home of the Hebbar Iyengars as her constituency, a change from her previous seat Andipatti, which is close to Madurai.

While it makes for a romantic story, the real truth is that in a ?do or die? election for Jayalalithaa, she is taking no chances. So while she acknowledged the house on East Chitra street by stopping her motorcade and accepting an angavastram from Kamala Paati?s daughter in law, she has herself claimed that the change was made to have an easier move in to the Assembly.

?Puratchi Thalaivi (Jayalalithaa) herself has said that she wanted a centrally located constituency, as it would convenient for the campaign. Srirangam is near Trichy, which is the centre of Tamil Nadu,? said P Kumat, member of Parliament from Trichy, at the camp office for the Jayalalithaa campaign.

Kumar also lets slip that in the last general elections, while his overall margin of victory was only 5,000 or so votes, it was Srirangam which gave him the edge with a lead of 21,000 votes. With nearly 25,000 brahmin votes in the area, no wonder Jayalalithaa has recalled her connections to East Chitra street.

Sources close to Jayalalithaa admit that the groundswell against the DMK will not be enough to defeat it. ?Which is why, this time, our alliances were settled early, we also came out with a competitive manifesto beating the DMK?s game of sops and did not peak early,? said another party MP on condition of anonymity. ?We will sweep the Coimbatore belt,? he added, while refusing to comment on the party?s chances in Madurai.

With a formidable alliance on her side, totaling nearly 47 per cent of the vote in the state, Jayalalithaa may finally defeat karunanidhi?s rainbow coalitions.

After a slowish start, Jayalalithaa seems to have decided that it would be the conspicuous consumption of the Karunanidhi family which she would target, and the strong arm tactics of Union chemicals and fertillisers minister M K Alagiri.

?Stalin himself would require a passport to visit Madurai,? said Jayalalithaa in an election meeting here, referring to Alagiri?s treatment of Madurai as his fiefdom. ?Is it his father?s property?? she asked. Alagiri, unlike his inarticulate self in Delhi, dismissed her remarks as ?a sign of her affection for me.?

She appears well aware that in a contest between tweedledee and tweedledum, in terms of ideology and political line, the arrogance of power could well propel a change of guard. ?There is really nothing much to choose between the two parties, but perhaps the massive accumulation of wealth by the Karunanidhi family may well appear just a tad bit vulgar for the electorate this time,? said S Venkataraman, a bureaucrat who has served both regimes.

Srirangam appears eager to give Amma a chance, it remains to be seen whether the rest of Tamil Nadu will follow.