Former minister Pratim Chatterjee died of a cardiac arrest on Sunday morning. He was 78. The Left Front leader had undergone treatment at a private hospital nearby and had returned home only four days ago. Chatterjee held the fire services portfolio for 15 years till 2011 and had been the MLA of Tarakeshwar. Chatterjee’s wife Chitra had passed away three and half years ago.

His daughter Kuheli Chatterjee reminisces about him: My father has been in active politics since the 70s. After his mentor Ram Chatterjee’s death he started contesting from the same seat, Tarakeshwar, in the mid-’80s. We used to stay in Golf Green then. We shifted to Salt Lake in 1996-97.

My father was born in Faridpur, now in Bangladesh, and migrated here post-Partition at the age of seven.

He was a diamantaire certified by De Beers. As general manager, sales, of a diamond company he would spend considerable time in the diamond market of Amsterdam. He loved to choose and present diamonds to family members. He had a great eye for jewellery design too. Many famous personalities sought his help to choose the right gemstones. The diamonds worn by Pandit Ravi Shankar and Lata Mangeshkar were chosen by my father.

Diamonds also made him forge a link with firearms. As he was often carrying valuable gemstones, for reasons of  security he carried a gun. He had a Smith & Wesson revolver and a double barrel gun.

I have so many memories of him cleaning the gun. He was a good marksman. When he visited my uncle, a district magistrate in Bihar, the two would compete at target shooting.

His love of theatre took seed from his student life when he would act in group theatre, having shared the stage even with Utpal Dutt.

He acted in the group Rupantari which later became Charbak. Chandra Dastidar was my mother’s sister and Sabyasachi Chakraborty is my cousin. My father did a lot of acting with Jochhon and Chandra Dastidar as well as with Sabyasachi’s parents. His career, corporate and political, kept him away from the stage but when he got a chance to do a role in a film he was very excited. He was to play Bashir, one of the villains, in the film based on Manik Bandyopadhyay’s Pragoitihashik. Bashir was a one-legged man. He rehearsed a lot at home walking with a crutch and with a part of his leg folded.

I was 14 or 15 then. I would sometimes go to the shooting spot. Jochhon mesho was directing the film and my cousin Kheyali was also acting in it.

He could not sleep much. So he developed a habit of writing poetry. They have been compiled and printed in five books.

In his political career, he was the fire services minister all along, since 1996 when he was a minister of state. Once there was a fire at the Haldia Oil Refinery. The news reached him at 2am. He immediately took our Maruti 800 out and drove all the way on his own. He loved to drive. But there was a lot of talk about this and since then, a government car would be be posted at our house all the time to take him in case of emergencies.

He revived his interest in acting after he became minister. I have not really seen any of his films as I am not a fan of Bengali commercial films but his shooting stints often allowed us to meet. I was married and settled in Bangalore then. If he would be shooting anywhere close we would meet up.

As told to Sudeshna Banerjee

Did you know Pratim Chatterjee?

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