Biman Basu, the senior-most Marxist leader in the country, pays homage to a comrade he has known and admired since the 1980s.
"Mamatadi will be defeated in 2026," asserts the taxi driver, "We are fed up with TMC goondas who invade every area of our lives. You can't do anything without their interference"
Then, after telling us he supports the BJP, he implores us not to mention his name in any report (he knows we are journalists) because, "mera zindagi haram ho jayega".
Where is the CPI-M office, I ask.
"Alimuddin Street," he says, "that's where the senior CPM leaders stay."
"That's where Biman Basu lives. Do you know he cooks his own food and just eats rice and potato."
Biman Basu shakes his head when I tell him this. A diminutive man in a spotless white kurta and dhoti, he has returned from a tour of Medinapur district a day after he traveled to Delhi for Sitaram Yechury's funeral.
"Rice and potato, I have not eaten since I left my family home in 1971. I don't eat egg too, which many consider veg."
"For me fish is veg," he says with a twinkle which can be seen behind his thick glasses. "I eat it with chappati." He adds he forsakes lunch and only has an apple and cucumber to subsist on through the day.
For someone who is "running 85" -- that quirky description of human chronology peculiar to India -- and despite his reputation as an austere, forbidding, Communist like his late mentor Promode Dasgupta, who headed the CPI-M in Bengal and accompanied Jyoti Basu through the first decade or so of Left Front rule in Bengal, Biman Babu does not appear to us an intimidating personality.
We discuss why Marxists smoke so much -- Promode Dasgupta, he said, smoked Burmese cigarettes which he has not seen anyone else smoke; Jyoti Basu smoked occasionally; the late lamented Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Sitaram Yechury smoked prodigiously, both like Jawaharlal Nehru taking care not to be photographed with a cigarette -- why the revolutionary spirit was spawned in Bengal and why he believes the result of the Maharashtra assembly election will be crucial in charting out the route for national politics.
We are here to talk to him about his memories of Sitaram Yechury, discuss the implications of the current unrest in Kolkata and other districts on Bengal politics and how he as the senior-most Marxist leader in India, sees the country's politics play out in the short term.
So here it is, Biman Basu's tribute to "Sita" as he calls the CPI-M general secretary who passed away earlier this month.
Video edited by Rajesh Karkera/Rediff.com
