In the A.I.A.D.M.K., political engagement is physical engagement. It begins with the bodies of the politicians themselves: their performances on-screen, whatever physical relationship they had with each other, their athletic struggles in the political arena. The people do the rest. ‘‘There’s something about blood bonds in Tamil Nadu politics,’’ the journalist Sadanand Menon told me. After M.R. Radha shot M.G.R., he said, fans lined up across the state to donate blood. And when M.G.R. came out of the hospital, he started addressing his audiences as ‘‘blood of my blood.’’ When he started his party, he called on his followers to prove their loyalty by being tattooed with his new flag, and thousands complied. When Jayalalithaa set up a tent on Marina Beach and fasted publicly for 80 hours in protest of interstate water policy, thousands joined her. At every letdown, it seemed, A.I.A.D.M.K. supporters tried to set themselves on fire.

Several Jayalalithaa skeptics told me that they doubt her party members care for her at all. They just know that mad acts of political theater are how things get done in Tamil Nadu. ‘‘I don’t think it’s about people liking her or liking Karunanidhi,’’ the playwright Gnani Sankaran said. ‘‘The people have no options. Because Jayalalithaa’s the boss, they totally depend on her.’’ What looks like fervency is perhaps merely a practical result of being trapped in a state with only two viable parties that are indistinguishable except for the personalities of their commanders.

This still doesn’t explain the self-immolations; surely there is no pragmatic angle on those. Yet Sankaran insisted to me that there was. ‘‘Party functionaries organize these things,’’ he said. ‘‘They’re not spontaneous.’’ A suicide, I said, seems like an extreme thing to organize. ‘‘They can organize extreme things,’’ he said. ‘‘Using money. Using emotion.’’ I first dismissed this as conspiracy theory. But as the months after Jayalalithaa’s conviction passed and the suicides continued, the party kept boasting of the tens of millions of rupees in compensation it gave to victims’ families, which surely only encourages more suicides. I often heard party men exaggerate the number of deaths; it’s something they’re clearly proud of. In statements issued from her home in the heart of Chennai, Jayalalithaa is careful to express her shock and dismay whenever her constituents self-destruct in her name.

The day before the verdict was quiet, so I went to the movies. Jayalalithaa made a cameo during the intermission. In a government ad, an old man complained that it never rained anymore, and a woman told him not to worry. Amma has been planting trees all over Tamil Nadu, and soon the rains will return. It sounded like her boldest giveaway yet. The ad closed with an M.G.R. song: ‘‘Tomorrow Is Ours.’’

Early on verdict day, I stopped by A.I.A.D.M.K. headquarters. A small crowd of hopeful fans had gathered, and a newscaster was clustering them together to use as a backdrop. One man in particular caught my eye: He wore a big black cowboy hat and a shiny white robe with the party symbol on it. It was only when I approached him that I saw he was missing three fingers on his left hand. His name was R. Rathanam, and he was the superintendent of police for a city called Salem, until the day in 2004 he chopped off his fingers with a machete and dropped them in the collection box at a local temple. ‘‘For Amma to win,’’ he said. I asked him how she responded to the gesture. ‘‘She suspended me from the force!’’ he said. Then he raved about how she covered the bill for his medical treatment.

Nearby, outside Jayalalithaa’s house, thousands were waiting for the verdict to be announced at 11 a.m. Everyone was performing for the news channels, shouting slogans: ‘‘Long live Amma!’’ ‘‘Revolutionary leader Amma!’’ ‘‘The savior of the people!’’ Often it seemed as if a shoving match was going to break out, as the fans elbowed one another to get in front of the cameras. But as the hour approached, the mood shifted. You couldn’t even call it anticipation: We had moved beyond that now. No news had come, and yet the whole street was swept in a wave of emotion, smiling, trading jokes, laughing.