The Faith of People Before Mamata’s Rise to Power

Let me go back fifteen or sixteen years.

It was either late 2009 or early 2010. The fall of the Left Front government in West Bengal then felt like merely a matter of time. On one freezing winter morning during that period, I boarded a bus to Krishnanagar with my then-girlfriend. We have a family house in Krishnanagar, and the plan was simple — introduce her to the relatives, enjoy some prawns and mutton for lunch, and then return home by the evening train.

The bus was unbearably crowded. Only one seat was vacant. I made my girlfriend sit there while I stood in front of her chatting casually. Just then, an elderly man boarded the bus and came to stand beside me.

In such a situation, there is an obvious thing one is expected to do — request the young woman to give up her seat for the elderly man. So I did exactly that.

But the moment I said it, the old man protested strongly.

Under no circumstances was he willing to make a young woman stand up so that he could occupy the seat himself. Between his polite refusals, blessings for our future, and appreciation for our willingness to offer the seat, he said something that I still remember line by line:

“What are you thinking? That I’ve become old? Not at all. I am still young. I’ll live many more years. And very soon, another mother like you”— he said while looking at my then-girlfriend — “will become the Chief Minister of our Bengal. My Durga Maa will solve everyone’s problems and bring smiles to people’s faces. I will only grow old and die after seeing all that happen.”

Needless to say, my Left-leaning girlfriend did not receive this blessing very warmly. But the budding journalist inside me never forgot that conversation.

That was perhaps the first time I truly witnessed the immense faith ordinary rural people had in Mamata Banerjee.