The Sunday of October 28, 2012, would have been different for Deepa Das Munshi if her spouse, Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, had been able to share her joy when she took oath of office as a junior minister in Manmohan Singh’s ministerial council. He wasn’t there to share her pride either when she was among the first of the new ministers Congress president Sonia Gandhi sought to meet the next morning at 10, Janpath.

For the past four years, Das Munshi — Priyada to friends and well-wishers — has been lying comatose in Delhi’s Apollo Hospital, unaware of the climactic events played out on the arena of national and West Bengal politics, of which he was a major protagonist for decades. The UPA has won a second term and is now about to face another election, the Left Front has been booted out, Mamata Banerjee is now in power. And closer home, his 52-year-old wife is now a minister.

Unlike Das Munshi, Deepa, the new minister for urban poverty alleviation and housing, was a ringside spectator until she debuted in the West Bengal Assembly, after winning the Goalpokhar seat in 2006. A theatre person, she got a masters degree in dramatics from Calcutta’s Rabindra Bharati University and worked with two well-known groups — Bahurupee and Gandhar. She recalls at least 10 “memorable” roles she performed, the standouts being those of Joan of Arc and Malini in Tagore’s eponymous play on religious conflict.

“I played all kinds of characters, soft and bold women,” she says, seated in her spacious wooden-panelled office at Nirman Bhavan. “Maybe it’s because I am a Cancerian. Joan of Arc was powerful. Malini was not very strong but she was secular. I have internalised aspects of the characters I played. I have a hard shell but am soft at the core. Nowadays, I love watching the theatrics played out in politics.”

Das Munshi — who was the Cabinet minister for parliamentary affairs and information and broadcasting — first noticed her when she was playing the role of Joan of Arc. “Our relationship started from there,” says Deepa, who grew up in Calcutta’s Ballygunge area. Her father, Benoy Ghosh, was an automobile engineer and her mother, Durga, a homemaker.

How did Priya’s near-irreversible health condition alter her life? “I sometimes wonder why a good person like him is suffering so much. If only he could speak and interact, despite being bed-ridden, it would be something. It’s so painful. I make it a point to keep myself happy and smiling. Because of my theatre background, I know how to control emotions. That’s my strength,” she says. “Priya taught to be to be strong. I have also seen Madam (Sonia). Despite all her problems in life, she never gave up smiling.”

Deepa’s signature sartorial appearance is sign enough that she never allowed Priya’s illness to wilt her desire to be normal. Usually impeccably outfitted in ethnic handloom saris, she is now wearing a tussar silk in its natural hues, complemented with a blouse in kantha weave and enhanced by a bindi that fills the forehead.

However, she says Das Munshi’s “support and guidance” have left a vacuum that can possibly never be filled. “He is much older than me but we were like friends. We never ever fought. In politics, we had our respective circles of persons over which there were debatable issues at times. We shared responsibilities and never made it a point to be out of town simultaneously. When we were both in town, we were particular about having at least two meals together,” she says.

Their only son, Priyadeep, 12, is a “pillar of support”, she says. “He has matured beyond his years. He’s a very close friend of mine. I have told him everything, what might happen to his father.” That, together with a group of “very close friends” from outside politics, takes Deepa through bad and good times. “Priya never had such friends. He never met people outside of politics,” she says.

A dedicated Congresswoman who didn’t once think of crossing over to “rising star” Trinamul Congress, unlike several of her former party colleagues, Deepa’s political initiation was “tough”. The Assembly constituency she was offered was a Muslim-dominated seat. “For a Hindu woman who never communicated directly with the people there, it was a great challenge,” she remembers.

By the time she reached the constituency in North Dinajpur, she found her organisationally-savvy husband had created a network of workers and loyalists. “I worked very hard, first as a social worker. The politician in me came later. I made it a point to be with people who were in distress and lend a shoulder to weep on even if I couldn’t do anything tangible. This is how people connected to me,” she says.

This lesson was imprinted on her because she had seen Das Munshi in and out of power. “I have seen people whom we counted as our friends go away. We have seen people who barely knew us, for whom we did nothing, come closer to us.” Deepa won against a Muslim candidate of the Forward Bloc and plunged herself into the hurly-burly of realpolitik.

State politics continue to engage her. Openly critical of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, she recalls how Das Munshi had shepherded Mamata when she tiptoed into the Congress. “He introduced her to Rajiv Gandhi; she consulted him every day. Priya supported her whenever she was in dire trouble. She would agitate (in Bengal) and urge him to ask the Centre to send in forces, to check the local police, which he would,” says Deepa.

When he was hospitalised (after a stroke), every leader, she recalls, called on him. “But she came to the hospital, stepped out of the lift and cursorily enquired of the doctors after him. I waited for her in the room. To think, she even visited her arch foe, Jyoti Basu (in hospital).”

But Mamata, she stresses, “reached the pinnacle after slowly climbing the stairs and is now going down fast on an elevator”. In the process, her party — in the doldrums in the state — may get a boost. Recent developments, starting with the Trinamul’s departure from the UPA and the induction of three ministers from West Bengal, may give the party’s Bengal unit some teeth.

“I am clear that the Congress was not gaining anything out of the Trinamul. Rather, the Trinamul was benefiting. Even where we had a strong organisation, we couldn’t fight because we were hemmed in by the alliance. Our workers were unable to hold aloft the party flag. Now at least they can speak in their own voices, they can breathe,” she says.

As a minister, she says her priority is ensuring that the funds disbursed by her department reach where they are intended to: the Calcutta Municipal Corporation and the four Congress-controlled municipalities of north Bengal. “I got a report and found that projects in our municipalities were not implemented. There is a gap between the funds released and the utilisation by the state government. Funds are either unused or diverted for other purposes. Unfortunately, the working of the municipalities depends on Centre-state relations. Now we are not on talking terms with the Trinamul. The chief minister insults and humiliates the Congress,” she holds.

She stresses the dream, nurtured by Das Munshi and her, of seeing a clone of Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Raiganj, her Lok Sabha constituency, has run aground because of Mamata. “For the last few months, I struggled and organised people’s movements in north Bengal. The irony is that while Singur started as a movement of farmers unwilling to part with their land, Raiganj is a movement of farmers willing to give their land for a hospital. I told the Prime Minister and Soniaji that we cannot allow the proposed hospital to go to another place,” Deepa says.

She winds herself up to such a pitch that she refuses to utter Mamata’s name when speaking of the medical centre. “We will wait for a couple of months to see how she responds. If she doesn’t relent, we will raise money from the farmers and purchase that land.”

Deepa is conscious of the fact that the Congress isn’t exactly robust in West Bengal — but is uncharacteristically silent on the subject. What did she think about the recent Jangipur by-election? The Congress candidate — President Pranab Mukherjee’s son — won the seat by a whisker even though the Trinamul had opted out of the contest.

“We did not think a Hindu-Muslim polarisation would happen. This is a bad signal for us but we have woken up,” she says.

The politician in Deepa clearly overwhelms the minister she has just become.