Didis New Deal

Except Srimatis five-year-old son Shashanko,who hid himself in his mothers pallu,and popped his head out only to demand a slice of papaya. Srimati,frail,flustered and hardly 20 years old,struggled with the cranky child and what seemed like an endless wait under the unforgiving sun. Lets go home then, whined her son. Na,Didi amader dekechen. Phire gele hobe na (Didi has called us. Theres no way we can go back without seeing her), scolded Srimati. The cucumber-seller added his bit,eyes rolling in disbelief and disapproval,Sheki,Didi ke dekhbi na? (What,you dont want to see Didi?) Shashanko,realising he was in a minority,settled for a thin slice of cucumber instead.

Mamata Banerjee seems to have taught hero worship to the villages of West Bengal,where for 34 years the sole authority and the sole object of deification was the Party. She is the stuff Shashankos bedtime stories will be made of,for a long time to come.

And for good reason. Srimatis husband,a daily labourer,went missing five years ago in the chaos following the police firing in Nandigram. The Trinamool Congress alleges that he was murdered and his body dumped by CPM cadres. Srimati is not entitled to the compensation that the government paid to families of those killed in the anti-land acquisition struggle,because her husbands body was never found. Didi went ahead and arranged a job for her at a local ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) centre.

Since August,1990,when she was brutally beaten by CPM goons,Mamata Banerjee has hovered in Bengals imagination as a symbol of protest abrasive,tempestuous,and,to some,dipping to levels of caricature. In the 90s,then still a Congresswoman,once at a rally she said she would kill herself to protest her partys deals with the Communists. She made a noose out of a shawl and threatened to hang herself with it,as a small group of supporters worked themselves into a frenzy. She once threw a shawl in Parliament at then railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan to protest his alleged negligence towards Bengal; memorably held Amar Singh by the collar during an argument; and did not shy away from hand-to-hand struggles with the police during her dharnas and fasts.

In her plain sari and chappals,Mamata Banerjee,daughter of a teacher,who lived (and still lives) in the lower-middle class neighbourhood of Kalighat,was an unlikely rebel for Kolkatas middle class. Mahadyuti Adhikary,a student and a civil service aspirant affiliated to no party,remembers a skit he saw years ago. A guy gets up on the stage as part of a spoof on politicians. All of five feet,a dull printed sari wound around him. He grabs hold of the microphone and yells,Ei dekhun ora amaar sari chhire diyeche (Just see,what they have done to my sari.) You could tell he was Mamata Banerjee in your sleep. That was the days favourite caricature, he says.

Yet,the city of Kolkata,stymied for years by the flight of talent and capital under the Left rule,was also her first pocket of strength,even while huge swathes of Bengals countryside remained red bastions. Her triumph in the assembly polls,

if it comes on May 13,would be because the itch for change has travelled to villages,and further. For a frustrated electorate,Banerjee now stands for the tenacity needed to weed out the CPM. Her old agenda,driving the CPM out,now matches the agenda of a large section of the states

population, says filmmaker Sumon Mukhopadhyay.

In 2011,Mamata Banerjee hasnt toned down her rabble-rousing ways (Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has often dismissed her acts as jatra,the boisterous rural theatre of Bengal). Her speeches are often bursts of invective against the CPM,and she uses a rustic satire that often gets her audience in splits. Asked by a reporter if she was worried about Somnath Chatterjee campaigning for CPM,she said,They wont win even if they dig out the mummies of Lenin and Marx. Her close aides insist her persona is key,and that the high-voltage assembly campaign she ran is almost a presidential one. More importantly,she now appeals to a wide swathe of the states citizens.

The fact that Banerjee hasnt benefited materially from politics helps her cause. She is a very clean woman. She has no interest in money. She does everything single-handedly. You cannot cite a single case of corruption against her. She really is what she comes across as, says writer-activist Mahashweta Devi.

The middle class is still wary of the legacy of Nandigram and Singur,but Banerjee has made the right noises by disavowing the politics of bandhs or anything that hinders development. The transformation of her image in the eyes of the middle class can be largely attributed to her representations in the media and her association with a group of respected artists and economists culture and education,two fields Bengal is territorial about, says professor Prashanta Roy,former head of the department of sociology at Presidency College,Kolkata. Her claims have shifted focus from ambiguous CPM-bashing to claims of development. At least,she now talks about industries,about education. And people are becoming curious,if not confident,about her ideas on these issues, he says.

The middle class is eager to discover her other side. So her art exhibitions are talking points in the city. Stalls her party put up at the Kolkata book fair overflowed with books of her poems and articles. She paints,writes and is reported to walk the treadmill to keep fit,her party workers point out eagerly.

Not everyone is sure,though,that she is the change they want her to be. I find it difficult to comment on the contemporary political situation as it throws a number of challenges at me as an individual,a voter,and a spectator, says 76-year-old theatre personality Rudraprasad Sengupta. However,I can say that we need heroes. And when we have none,we make them. Similarly,Mamata Banerjee has emerged as the Cinderella of our times. Shunned for long and suddenly very coveted,only time will say if the leader and her people match or if they destroy each other. Adhikary,who once laughed at a Mamata spoof,agreed with the scepticism but said his Facebook status on the day Kolkata went to polls exhorted his friends to vote for change.

Some 200 km away,in Nandigram,Banerjee was in full slow. She pointed at the wobbly Tekhali bridge and declared: This is an international place. It will go down in history. The crowd broke into peals of screams. Bhulte pari nijer naam,bhulbo nako Nandigram (I can forget my name,but I cant forget Nandigram).

Srimati scrambled closer to the fence,but Didi had already disappeared into the chopper. She gave Shashankos head a satisfied pat. And herself a small consolation. Didir koto kaaj. Tao elen (Didi has so much work. Still she came), she said with a smile,and disappeared into a sea of hero worshippers.