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The Left Front may plead one Mamata Banerjee is enough but trust Bengal to have a few tucked away.
As the Mamata Banerjee with the people’s mandate takes oath of office as the state’s first woman chief minister on Friday, three other Mamata Banerjees will be in front of the television at home watching their famous namesake making history.
Such is the power of the name that when 80-year-old Mamata Banerjee went to cast her vote this election, she found people making way for her at the polling station. “They asked her name and the moment she said ‘Mamata Banerjee’, everyone started saying ‘Arrey! Shorey ja, rail minister esheychhey (make way for the rail minister),” recalled son Tapash.
The Sodepur resident is used to jokes within the family about her name, but the past couple of years have brought more attention than her parents would have hoped for when they named her Mamata almost three decades before Mamata the future chief minister was born.
“Only my family members, mainly my sister, would tease me earlier. Now people exclaim “Orey baba!” the moment they come to know my name,” the octogenarian said.
Lake Market homemaker Mamata Banerjee, 59, shares her older namesake’s excitement at being “recognised” wherever she goes these days. In her younger days, hardly anyone had reacted to her “My name is Mamata Banerjee” because politician Mamata wasn’t to come to prominence until 1984. But over the years, the elderly homemaker has become used to people raising their eyebrows or smiling at the mere mention of her name.
“I am thrilled that my name will now be followed by ‘chief minister of West Bengal’. Many people called me on the day of the election verdict to congratulate me for the victory,” she joked.
The youngest Mamata Banerjee of them all, a 30-year-old former resident of Kalindi near Lake Town, couldn’t stop giggling as she remembered the first time someone asked her whether that was her real name. “My father and I had once gone to buy railway tickets and the person at the counter just couldn’t believe that I shared his boss’s name. He gave me a serious look and asked: ‘Do you know you are the rail minister?’ It was so funny,” recounted Mamata Banerjee III, who shifted to Sambalpur in Orissa with her husband three months ago.
The young homemaker said she realised early that the only way she could handle the attention was by retaining her sense of humour. She chose to keep her maiden name after marriage despite her husband’s friends teasing him that he should have thought twice before marrying Mamata Banerjee!
“Now those friends congratulate him on his wife ousting the Left Front to become the state’s first non-communist chief minister in 34 years and the first woman in Bengal to head a government,” she smiled.
So would Mamata Banerjee, Mamata Banerjee and Mamata Banerjee have liked to visit Raj Bhavan on Friday to see politician Mamata take oath? “Someone who answers to my name is the first woman chief minister of Bengal. I am extremely proud and happy with that,” said the oldest Mamata.
