Basu with Gandhi on Sunday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Calcutta, Dec. 13: Jyoti Basu told Gopalkrishna Gandhi he had been “quite happy” with him when the governor called on the CPM leader on his penultimate day in office.

What the patriarch said, however, was not in tune with the sentiment his party had often expressed since Gandhi wrote about his “cold horror” after police firing left 14 dead in Nandigram.

With the governor seated at his bedside, Basu said: “I’m quite happy that you are meeting me. I have been quite happy with you.”

“When are you going? You are going to Madras?” he asked.

“Tomorrow. Yes… to Madras. I couldn’t go without coming and saying goodbye to you,” said the governor.

“Give your wife my best wishes,” Basu told him.

Basu’s fondness for the Mahatma’s grandson may not be music to the chief minister whose government had had to face his public criticism over the March 14, 2007, firing and the “Nandigram recapture” by CPM cadres that November.

The “recapture”, about which the chief minister said “they had been paid back in the same coin”, “dampened the spirit of Deepavali” for Gandhi.

Gandhi’s statements had left top CPM leaders red-faced. Addressing a rally in Calcutta in December 2007, state secretariat member Benoy Konar had said that the governor should no longer sit in Raj Bhavan but hit the roads with a Trinamul Congress flag.

Central committee member Shyamal Chakraborty said “our governor is selectively ‘filled with cold horror’”.

However, the chief minister himself never spoke against the governor when CPM leaders lashed out at him one after the other.

During the impasse over the Tata Motors plant in Singur last year, Gandhi had convened a meeting between Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee at Raj Bhavan that arrived at a so-called “agreement” which is still a sore point for the government. The decision was to give back “land to the maximum” to unwilling farmers. Mamata interpreted it as the state’s promise to return 400 acres from the project area. The government said it had promised alternative plots outside and only 70 acres from the car plant site.

The governor reached the CPM leader’s Salt Lake residence around noon today.

After an exchange of flowers — cryssanthemums from the governor and red roses from the CPM leader — Basu said: “I know what you are here for but I can’t hear even with machines and I can’t see properly.... For me, conversation is impossible…. I thought of meeting you there in the other room but I couldn’t go.”

The governor said he always remembered Basu’s wife from the time they had visited South Africa, where he was the high commissioner. “We remember Kamaldi so often….”

After the meeting, Gandhi said: “He’s in good cheer. I first met him in England in 1992 even though I had heard of him much before that. I have had the benefit of his presence and guidance on so many matters over the years, and particularly in the last five years.”