The author is impressed with Manik Sarkar’s Spartan lifestyle

I have grown up/ on your bank / My Red River!/ I have slept with you/in the moonlit night !...

As Anil Sarkar, a minister in the Manik Sarkar government in Tripura and a poet of great repute, recited the Bengali translation of my poem My Red River, I could not but help wonder how this great river was also metaphor for the flow of ideas between the two states, Assam and Tripura.

The wonderful occasion — as I had written in the previous episode — was a woman writers’ meet on Northeast Oral Languages organised in Agartala in February this year by the Sahitya Akademi’s North East Centre for Oral Literature.

The programme was held at Nazrul Khsetra at Banamalipur and the venue was a sea of people.

Vehicles of all kinds packed the parking lot and I was sure that many ministers and bureaucrats too must have come to attend the programme.

Just before the programme was about to start, I saw an elderly lady reach the venue in a rickshaw. Someone pointed towards her and told me, “Look, chief minister Manik Sarkar’s wife has come.”

I was too stunned to react. I come from a state where even the relatives of ministers and bureaucrats enjoy VIP status.

I remembered a certain minister of Assam whose wife reached her office each day with three or four security cars trailing her vehicle.

Another guest at the function told me that in Tripura, the wives of minister and MLAs travel mainly by rickshaws and autorickshaws.

The day before my return to Guwahati, chief minister Manik Sarkar invited me to his office for a discussion . As I walked to his office premises, I was impressed by the austerity around. No signs of extravagance anywhere except for a small, well-maintained flower garden in front of the office.

Manik Sarkar is a very well-read man but is very careful in his choice of words, letting out his mind in a very dignified and cultured manner. We spoke about different things, our problems, about literature, about the youth of today.

I was told that Manik Sarkar is, perhaps, the only chief minister in the country who stops in the middle of a journey to speak to a commoner and is very accessible. He was rooted to the ground which I feel is the hallmark of a great leader. Before I returned, he presented me a wonderful portrait of a boat which was made entirely of bamboo. It was Tripuri craftsmanship at its best.