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Calcutta, May 20: The Grassflower Revolution is potted.
Mamata Banerjee was today sworn in as chief minister of Bengal in a blur of green-and-white that the Red Guard watched in a stun.
On the lawns of Raj Bhavan, the first woman to be Bengal’s chief minister watched the Red Guard watching her.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Biman Bose and Asim Dasgupta watched Mamata from privileged front-row seats. She sat on the dais as her 36 ministers were sworn in one by one, playing with her phone, texting favourites and breaking into impish feminine smiles that made light of the office she was about to occupy, as if she were cavalier about the power she has always sought.
It is challenging for Mamata to sit still. In the formalities of the transition she has wrought though, she had little choice.
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Minutes earlier, Mamata had swept into the pandal, green-bordered white sari and white stole around the shoulder, as if she were going to address yet another election rally. She waved and nodded at the ministers-designate on her right, at the other end of the dais, and when she glimpsed the front-row occupants she folded her hands in a namaskar.
And then she walked past the front row, past the Marxist trio — Asim Dasgupta, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Biman Bose — who nodded or folded hands cursorily.
The cusp, the very cleft of change, is a blink-and-miss moment. But that nanosecond contains within it decades of tension.
But isn’t it mere courtesy? Yes, for sure.
How about taking it as a guard of honour from the befallen?
That would rile the comrades.
Mamata was polite. She invited her foes to her celebration. But there is a triumphalism in wanting the defeated to witness her hour of glory.
Mamata never attended the swearing-in ceremonies of any of the seven Left Front governments that have preceded, and because of which, she is here today. But she, too, has cared to invite a detractor who used to refuse to acknowledge her by name, as if merely that would deny her existence.
Cornered by Mamata’s morning invite through Partha Chatterjee, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee came, along with his trusted colleagues in the party. So did other ministers of his erstwhile cabinet — Kshiti Goswami and Biswanath Choudhury and Naren De — who did not have seats marked out for them and gritted their teeth and sat behind a wall of photographers.
Mamata had reached out. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had little option but to respond.
Probably that has never happened. When Mamata last visited Writers’ Buildings wanting to meet Jyoti Basu, she was thrown out in 1993. She swore never to enter that building unless it was on her terms.
Through the years, through the troubles over Singur and Nandigram, when the Left government invited her for talks, she refused staunchly.
Yet, they were here today under one roof, curtsying in a manner that has been alien to Bengal’s politics through three decades.
Under the canopy on the lawn of Raj Bhavan, Mamata did not freeze that moment but walked on. She bent to touch litterateur Mahasweta Devi’s feet, grinned and bowed to Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram and the Prime Minister’s envoy Sam Pitroda, and then took an about-turn to return to her corner.
The 50-member brass band of Calcutta police struck the national anthem just then because governor M.K. Narayanan had climbed up the stage. Mamata froze into a standstill facing the dais, almost immediately in front of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
If there is a bit of Buddha in Bengal’s Mamata Moment, Mamata will figure largely in Buddha’s vision.
She has not only obstructed it, she has also obscured it. And when he did get a straight line of sight she was up there, on the stage, taking the oath of office and secrecy in — unlike some of her colleagues — unfaltering Bengali.
Chief secretary Samar Ghosh had called out her name and the governor had started her off and invited her to share the platform with him.
They sat in chairs on the dais over a carpet of red and gold. Everywhere else it was green-and-white. Mamata’s artist-confidant Shuvaprasanna had ensured that. The décor in the background and on the edges of the stage was speckled with green leaves and white champa, jui and tagar flowers propped up by stalks of rajnigandha.
“Green is a very difficult colour to establish,” the painter said, explaining the colour scheme. “It is not like the earth colours, like reds and browns. Because there is so much greenery everywhere around us, in nature, I had to think of ways to establish our green (the colour of Trinamul).”
He offset the greens with whites.
Shuvaprasanna also chose “Nai Nai Bhoy” (there is no fear) that was accommodated in the official ceremony in a departure from the past.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Asim Dasgupta and Biman Bose stood up anticipating that the national anthem was about to play — they have seen more such ceremonies than anyone else — when the Tagore number was sung, and when it’s meaning sunk in, they sat down.
“There is no fear,” Shuvaprasanna said, “and only one part of our struggle is over and the second one is beginning and we have all eyes watching us. That is why we need to be fearless again and so I chose this song.”
Through the 90 minutes that followed Mamata’s oath, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee sat stoically as did Asim Dasgupta. Biman Bose clenched his fingers and knocked his temples once in a while. It was hotter and more humid inside the pandal than it was outside. Maybe that caused the headache.
They did not stay for tea. They asked for no sympathy, either.
The tea and snacks were served on the South-East Lawn, just across the driveway, where Mamata and Narayanan sat in the shade of coconut and palm trees.
Most of the 3,800 invitees hung on. They huddled around Mamata, clicking photographs on cellphones and asking Didi for autographs.
When a policeman in the cordon around her asked some youths to pipe down, one shot back: “What will you know how it feels after 34 years?”
Mamata’s council of ministers, sworn in this afternoon from the “auspicious” moment at 1.01pm, is an eclectic mix. Sukumar Hansda of Jhargram — in whose constituency Lalgarh is — took oath in Alchiki, the language Santhals speak, Sardar Rachhpal Singh in Bengali, Javed Khan in English; theatre-person Bratya Basu took oath in the name of God just as Purnendu Bose, labour leader, and Amit Mitra, former industry-body head, solemnly affirmed their fealty to the Constitution. Mamata took oath in the name of God; Abdul Karim Choudhary in the name of Allah.
Only Manas Bhuniya, the chief of the state Congress, defied the dress code prescribed by her, wearing a yellow kurta over a white dhoti, while all the others were in white kurta and dhoti with a Tricolour stole around their necks. When Madan Mitra went to take oath a stray shout rang out: “Orey Modnaaa.”
On the dais, Narayanan and Mamata conferred whenever one minister left after being sworn in and the next was to follow. But it was too public. By the time they were on the lawns, they decided there was more to talk about. Narayanan invited Mamata to his quarters on the first floor above Raj Bhavan’s south entrance.
Mobbed by supporters and her ministers who did not yet know their portfolios, her first words in public after being sworn in were nearly drowned in the cacophony after that unscheduled hour-long meeting. She was still trying to make her way to her vehicle, the mob around her alternately closing in and parting.
Addressed by a familiar reporter as “chief minister,” she cut him short and said: “Hey, I’m a commoner, what chief minister!”
She said she would meet the governor every week.
Then she drove to the south-west gate on her way to Writers’. The mob closed in on her again at the exit gate. She got off and walked, one woman moving with the crowd, the crowd moving as one, in a mass of black heads and grassflowers, towards the Red colonial-era building from where she was so unceremoniously ejected the last time.
Mamata has begun a journey into a time in which organised chaos will compete with chaotic organisation.
Thus marches the Grassflower Revolution. Grassflowers grow shallow roots but sprout hither and thither.