Buddha's smile and the Bengal polls

What now passes as the surefootedness of a batsman in peak form was once considered arrogance.

Buddhadev Bhattacharya was this translator of Mayakovsky's poems. He was the rebel fringe man who quit the West Bengal cabinet in protest against unwanted elements in the CPI-M and the state government in 1993. He was the man who wrote a play after quitting. It was called Dushhamay (Bad Times), and was about how a political party goes to seed.

He was never the mass messiah he seems to have become.

On Wednesday, when a reporter said her television crew had seen people terrorised in Maoist-affected parts of the state, Bhattacharya cut her down, saying, "I think you couldn't feel the pulse of the people. You have to go deep into the masses."

There were such snubs galore. When a BBC reporter asked for Bhattacharya's opinion on the 7,000 madrasas in the state, he replied: "I don't know who has given you that figure." "Intelligence sources," was the reporter's reply. Buddha quipped back, without even one interlude of his habitual twinge of the lips: "Your intelligence? Or the Government of India's? My information does not have that figure."

The real answer followed: "My only appeal to them (madrasas) is to join the main stream. You get affiliated to the Madrassa Board, and you follow the common syllabus. You teach Arabic, no problem. You teach the Koran, no problem. But you have to teach - you should teach - English, mathematics, computers. Otherwise, minority youth will not have a chance for future job opportunities."