When I ring the doorbell of Somnath Chatterjee's house in south Calcutta, the sky is thunderous. The house, too, is a cumulonimbus shade and seems one with the horizon that morning.
I am not sure if this is a good sign.
I have been trying to get an appointment with the former Lok Sabha Speaker for some days now. "It is World Cup season and I was told you are a football fan," I had said over the phone when I got through to him. He had laughed indulgently, but wearily. Now, finally, I was here. Indeed, I could do with less cloud, more silver lining.
The biggish ground floor room I am ushered into is Chatterjee's chamber. There is a large secretariat table laden with directories and stationery. It is skirted with six upright wooden chairs. I lower myself into one of them. I have arrived early.
Barring the floor, ceiling and the space occupied by photographs and portraits, the rest of the room is filled with books. Thick, hardbound, white and red and black volumes of Supreme Court cases by the year.
There are two oils on one wall, of a man and a woman. "His parents?" I ask the man who ushered me in, the same who is immersed in a Bengali newspaper. "Grandparents," he offers helpfully and then goes back to reading, leaving the walls to do their own introductions.
Ho Chi Minh. Rabindranath Tagore. A framed citation. There is a portrait of Chatterjee, a photograph with former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu and other partymen, another one of him that is captioned Bhuban Dangar Maath, Santiniketan, 2004. There is an oil of his father, the late Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee.
" Teen purush barrister... Three generations of barristers," says the only other occupant of the room without looking up from his reading. I am wondering if it will be intrusive of me to get up and read the citation, when someone comes down the stairs and delivers a message from the floor above. Chatterjee is ready to receive me.
Unlike, the lawyer's chamber below, where wood and books and photographs and memorabilia all mingle to create a certain impression, a single presence fills up this room - that of the man himself. Of course, on the sofa next to him is his wife, Renu. They are both facing the giant LCD screen on the wall that has on one of the Bengali news channels.
As I sit down in the sofa closest to Chatterjee, he says, "You want to know about football, but I have forgotten everything."
He has been to Seoul to watch the World Cup - that would be in 2002 when South Korea and Japan co-hosted the event - and the US too, even further back in 1994. I fill in the gaps in my head. In 1994, he had been leader of his party, the CPI(M), in the Lok Sabha. The Seoul match was two years before he was elected for the 10th time as a member of the 14th Lok Sabha from Bolpur. The area was once a Left stronghold. Today, however, the Lok Sabha seat has gone to Trinamul Congress' Anupam Hazra.
But the memory of the World Cup that brings a smile to his lips is 2006. "I was the Speaker then," he says. "They had heard I was a football fan and sent me an official invitation. Both of us [he and his wife] went. And we were joined by our grandson who, too, loves the game."
Later, I find a June 2006 datelined piece from The Telegraph archives reporting how that summer the then information and broadcasting minister, Priyaranjan Das Munshi, had also gone to oversee World Cup matches in Stuttgart in Germany for two weeks on an all-expenses-paid trip by Fifa. It was reportedly to ensure India improved its rating from the then 117th position in the Fifa rankings. India now ranks 97. The piece had a reference to Chatterjee's impending visit, too.
Thus far, Chatterjee is talking mechanically. From time to time, when we get stuck with names and years, I Google. The mere tap-tapping at the phone to summon borrowed memory from virtual space seems to impress the man who had reportedly delivered more than 500 speeches in Parliament between 1971 and 2009; of these, 372 are logged as "major" in the Lok Sabha records.
In the meantime, with the narration, the dormant memories have started to stir, stretch, spin and finally, kick around. His face registers that entire spectrum. And we reach a point when he is basking in what is evidently a fond memory.
" Khub khatir korechhilo shei bar... They took very good care of us that time," he says and turns to look at his wife. She smiles back, a more earnest fan of the game, apparently, than Chatterjee himself. "I was a Mohun Bagan supporter," she softly interjects.
By now Chatterjee's consciousness is streaming Fifa. "I was seated next to Angela Merkel [she had become Chancellor of Germany the previous year]. One man in one of the rows behind us came up to me at one point and said, 'Sir, I am the foreign minister [of Germany]." This time, he is seismic with laughter.
A help comes and serves us tea. It is a June afternoon and the air conditioner is purring. Chatterjee has a light shawl draped over his shoulders. In his unmistakable baritone, so familiar from broadcasts of Parliamentary sessions - it was on his initiative that the proceedings of the Zero Hour began to be telecast live from July 2004 and, thereafter, two channels were launched to air the proceedings of the two Houses - he continues.
He likes Maradona and Messi. He finds Ronaldo "too arrogant". Did he himself ever play? He nods, "Forward -e kheltam." Makes a face, "Not a very good player. But ami bhara khetechhi... I have been hired, I played for a local club once during my schooldays."
He tells me, when he returned from England, a freshly minted barrister, he mustered up just about enough courage to request his father's friend, solicitor S.M. Basu, to help him with a membership of Mohun Bagan Club. "He was congratulating me on my academic success and I seized the opportunity to evince a long-suppressed wish. He was secretary of the club. I said, ' Ekta boro ichchhe achhe.'" He chuckles perhaps at the memory of his own reticent self all that many years ago.
The football trail is winding up, I can tell. He is talking about his student days in England. "We lived in a three-storey house, about 10 of us, all Indian students. The landlady was Mrs Lewis. She was very fond of me. It was the year of Elizabeth II's coronation [1953]. All of us decided to ask Mrs Lewis if we could watch it on her television. But upon hearing the request, she thundered, 'I will only allow Mr Chatterjee.'" There is great delight written all over the face of the veteran politician, the same who won the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 1996, as he relishes the compliment inherent in Mrs Lewis's reprimand.
I am hesitant to bring up politics, lest it touches old wounds and new. I bring up his autobiography, Keeping The Faith: Memoirs Of A Parliamentarian. In the chapter titled "The Divisive NDA years," he writes, "For me and other Right-thinking Indians, the years 1996 to 2004 were traumatic due to the ascendance of communal forces and the failure of secular forces to provide a stable government." At the reference he nods knowingly. Says sombrely, "Khub dukkho... It saddens me much. Neither democracy, nor a government of the people." And he leaves it at that.
Will he watch the World Cup on his giant TV this year? He might. In between the football talk, he had fleetingly referred to his health issues. Now he says starkly, "Waiting for the final call." Just then, one of his mobile phones trills. He shows me a video of his great-grandson Neel, a toddler. He points to a photo cutout of the boy by his side, someone has Photoshopped tufts of green grass and a football at his feet.
