Poet in disguise

CHIEF Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee of West Bengal, the principal architect of the Left Front's victory, is at heart a poet. Buddhadeb is not only the inheritor of a great tradition left by his uncle Sukanta Bhattacharjee, perhaps the most promising poet that the Communist movement in Bengal has thrown up, but also has produced works of no mean merit himself. These include critiques of the works of the poet Jibanananda Das and the towering modern Bengali novelist Manik Bandopadhyay. He has also produced a number of plays, the latest one being a translation of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, dramatised and adapted to the Bengali milieu.

He is particularly fond of the magic realism of modern Spanish novels, especially the Gabriel Garcia Marquez variety. Buddhadeb has translated one his works, Clandestine in Chile, into Bengali. As for his love of Rabindranath Tagore, reliable sources say that he can quote from memory at least 500 songs of Tagore. Despite his stupendous responsibilities, he still devotes at least three hours every night to the study of literature.

This quintessential Bengali bhadralok (gentleman), always immaculately clad in crisp white dhoti and kurta, has not let power go to his head. He has staunchly refused to shift from his two-room government flat in a housing colony in south Kolkata, which he shares with wife Meera and daughter Suchetana. In fact, the Chief Minister of West Bengal owns no house, property, or car. He does not even have a cell phone. He gifts the party the Rs.8,500 he gets as the Chief Minister's salary, and in lieu thereof draws a party whole timer's salary of Rs.3,200. One can surmise that his wife, who works as a librarian, has to bear the brunt of the struggle of balancing the family budget. The only concession he makes to luxury is his addiction to good cigarettes - much to the chagrin of his doctors and family.

His other passion is the Bengali custom of adda (unstructured enlightened discussions). Perhaps on account of the paucity of space in his house, he has to hold it in Nandan, a cultural hub he himself has built up over the years. That is also the place where he receives guests, including VIP visitors who seek a meeting beyond office hours.

This image of a simple, cultured, Bengali gentleman, without any ostentation or trappings of power, trying to improve the lot of a beleaguered State, has done more to win the hearts of people than a host of statistics and a storm of rhetoric could ever have achieved.

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay