Satgachhia, April 30 :    Satgachhia, April 30:  Both the storm and the darkness were gathering thick and fast by the time Jyoti Basu arrived. Here he was at his very own Satgachhia, which elected him five times, for what was possibly the very last time. But storm clouds, rain and a thin crowd botched Basu's last bow to Satgachhia. If nature was unkind, his folks were hardly any better. A little over 2,000 people, not excluding the village children who made up the front rows, assembled at the Bawali football ground that had seen 10,000-strong rallies. There were the usual salutes of 'Jyoti Basu lal salam' and 'bam front zindabad' as Basu's motorcade stopped by the ground nestling in the midst of a vast, green stretch of paddy fields. But the wind grew stronger as the 86-year-old patriarch climbed the stairs to the dais and was greeted by Diamond Harbour MP Samik Lahiri and the CPM candidate for Satgachhia, Gokul Bairagi, who had been Basu's election agent since 1982. At six, as Basu rose to speak, the wind knocked one tube lamp off its pole near the dais. Lahiri and Bairagi looked up at the sky above and the thinning crowd in front. Basu began by expressing his gratitude to Satgachhia and quickly went over to launching his customary attack on the 'communal' BJP and the Trinamul-Congress alliance. He was scathing in his onslaught on Mamata Banerjee who, he alleged, was misleading the people with false promises. 'But simple people are taken in by her promises and vote for her without knowing what they are doing. We have to go to the people and tell them all this. But there is very little time.' There was very little time for Basu today. He was in a hurry to deliver a message - for Bairagi. He didn't have time for that, too. The rain was now falling hard, forcing most of the thin crowd to leave the ground for cover. He wound the speech up in just six minutes and immediately came down the wooden stairs, the carpet on them now wet and slippery, and walked cautiously to his car. Tulsidas Majhi, Bairagi's election agent, attributed the poor turnout to two more CPM rallies within the Satgachhia constituency around the same time - one at Budge Budge, the other at Bishnupur (West). Dilip Datta, a local party supporter, had a more plausible explanation: 'We had voted Basu all these years. But Bairagi is not Basu.' Satgachhia was getting less and less kind to Basu anyway - with victory margins of over 38,000 in 1977 and just 11,000 in 1996. One sunny winter afternoon this January, the people gave him a rousing reception at Nodakhali on his retiring as chief minister. Basu has had better times at Satgachhia.