Marxist of the masses

Veteran Journalist M J Akbar in todays Times of India writes about Basu:

The gentle silence of a last goodbye began to seep through the Calcutta dusk on January 6 as Jyoti Basu’s city began to absorb the final drift of an icon from the shadow of age to the darkness of eternity. It had heard the code words ‘critical’ and ventilator’. There was nothing left to say.

Marx and Oxbridge were not that distant when Jyoti Basu went for his degree in the 1930s, with some compromise on both sides. Jyoti Basu returned with the heart of a gentleman and the head of a Marxist. He was the perfect Bengali.

Our paths first crossed in a strange, distant fashion. I was trapped in my small town mohalla in Telinipara by communal riots in 1968. He was home minister of Bengal. He arrived on a duty call. He did not come to our mohalla but learnt that I had not been able to go to my college, the famed Presidency, for weeks.

The next day the police provided safe passage. Whenever the endemic and poisonous eczema of riots troubled our land he would send a message to ensure that Telinipara was safe. He rarely forgot the individual in the tumult of the crowd.

A few months ago, on a sudden impulse, I asked to meet him. He was sitting in an armchair, in his familiar casual wear. Age had shrunk his face to a pale, taut mask on which I saw the flicker of images from the past: India’s most charismatic Chief Minister, a man whose sentence could change the dynamic of power, whose speech was all the assurance that the Bengali, Hindu or Muslim, needed.

I tried small talk, with increasing difficulty. I gave him a couple of books. “I can’t read anymore,” he said, gently. The fire returned, if only as a flame. “The doctors come every day. I think they must be laughing after they leave.” A pause. “Why did you come? Why did you come to see a dead man?”

I broke down.