Shekhar Suman on the campaign trail

In Kadam Kuan, a Patna neighbourhood, television star Shekhar Suman is still known as his father's son.

"Dr Phani Bhushan Prasad's house is by the temple up ahead. You'll find Shekhar Suman there," says the man in the small shop at the corner. Suman's parents live in Bihar's capital where his father is a well-known surgeon who practiced at the Patna Medical College and Hospital.

In a state where it is often said that 'people do not give their vote and wed their daughters outside their caste,' Dr Prasad refused to give a surname to his four children to ensure that their identity was not based on caste.

And it is values like these, coupled with his television star appeal and his roots in the city, that his son hopes will appeal to the voters of Patna Saheb.

Suman is pitted against a man he calls his "bade bhaiyya (elder brother)", who also happens to be Bihar's only real film star till date, Shatrughan Sinha from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Under the strands of marigold flowers -- a constant with every candidate in any part of the country -- Suman is drenched with sweat. His sleek fit linen shirt soaked after a hard day of campaigning at several such small meetings in the largely urban constituency.

The Patna Lok Sabha constituency was split into Patna Sahib and Patliputra after delimitation. The candidate from the Patliputra seat is India's colourful Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is also contesting the election from Chhapra and has been saying pralay (armageddon) will befall Bihar if he (Lalu) were to lose!

Suman has been trying hard to woo voters, playing cricket matches, singing songs to establish bon homie, using all kinds of gimmicks that a political novice can.

While a board next door adorns the Congress office entrance, this historic site founded by Mazrul Haque, who started a school during the Quit India Movement, bears no notice to justify its importance.

Here is where Mahatma Gandhi inaugurated the Bihar Vidyapeeth and Dr Rajendra Prasad, India's first President, spent the last days of his life. But this landmark location, which now has a museum in Dr Prasad's memory, seems a footnote in history.

"I joined the Congress because I like and respect the party. It is the party of Gandhi, Nehru and Patel -- the party that got us our freedom," says Suman. His bade bhaiyya Shatrughan Sinha -- never short of a quip -- told a television channel that the Congress novice was so ill informed that he had been saying the party had been in power for 125 years!

"I didn't know the Congress came to power even before we got Independence," Sinha told rediff.com earlier that afternoon with a smirk.

Suman -- who also has a reputation for sharp repartee -- is taking it all in his stride and on the chin. Both rivals don't refer to each other by name, preferring to call each other 'bade bhaiyya' and 'chotta bhai.'

"People think politics is a dirty word. 'You are in politics?' they ask in disbelief -- almost asking you with the same disbelief as -- 'Are you a 'smuggler?' They have an impression as bad as that," he tells the crowd, "Politics has been ruined by people and it needs educated and honest people."

In keeping with the ethos of small-town India, Sinha and Suman's families are not unknown to each other and only a short distance separates the stars's ancestral homes in Patna. Often their campaign convoys cross each other as they cover the constituency in the summer heat.

It's 10.30 pm. The Congress candidate has just returned from the campaign and is to leave again for another engagement in an hour. A few men throng the verandah, they have accompanied Suman from Mumbai to assist him. His wife Alka and son Adhyayan have also been camping in the city to bolster his campaign.

A group of about 20 men come in, led by a pot-bellied kurta-clad man. "We are Congress workers and have come to meet him. I live down the road," the man tells one of Suman's assistants. "If you live down the road, how come you are only showing up now and haven't come here earlier?" clearly the Mumbai-wallah retorts brusquely.

The Congress-worker-next-door provides a practiced spiel of how he is a soldier of the party in response and is quickly served tea outside as he waits for Suman.

Far from their make-believe worlds, far away from Mumbai where both actors settled down many years ago, Suman and Sinha, both Kayasthas, the dominant caste in the constituency, are banking on their popularity to take them to the Lok Sabha.

"I will fulfill your dreams and I need your cooperation. What I say, I do," Suman tells crowds who come out in the Bihar heat to listen to him.

As a final crescendo to his campaign, he hopes that Sonia Gandhi or her son will address a rally that could add that last minute, much-needed, punch to his campaign. Local media reports indicate that the famed Gandhi Maidan in Patna has been booked in anticipation of that arrival, even though the Gandhi rally has not been confirmed so far.

In a state where the moribund Congress is only now seeing some glimmer of revival, after it refused to go along with Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, Shekhar Suman shows his palms and asks voters to raise theirs and vote for him.