No poll pomp and show: On the ground in Karnataka's Mangaluru

In large swathes of the city, Christians (mostly Catholic) and Muslims have a significant presence

Walking around in Mangaluru, you would not know a cut-throat election campaign is on in the state. There are no cutouts, walls are not painted with graffiti or plastered with posters and there are absolutely no speeding vehicles blaring cacophonous music and messages on loudspeakers.

The politics is in the subtext. At the BournBon Bakery (among other things, they serve a Bournvita mousse) youngsters looked at each other when asked about politics, shrugged, and a wit among them commented: ‘ask around. You won’t get Chateaubriand in these parts’. In a city of gourmets and gourmands, the reference was clear. The divide