A day after entering a sub-middleclass household in the beach town of Digha where she personally prepared tea for the inmates as a part of her outreach exercise, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has scribbled a poem on what she calls a “depressing state” of Indian democracy.
In the poem titled “Thikana” or “Address” where the poet apparently labours hard to find out the lost address of democracy that India used to be, Banerjee writes how the address of democracy has become unrecognisable. Incidentally, the poem came a day after the arrest of former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram.
Though the poet herself has not translated the lines into English, the basic import of the verse is somber as she sadly writes how “cawing crows have gone dumb and how the sparrows have stopped pecking at the grains of rice.”
The Chief Minister goes on to rue how in a forlorn democracy “justice has been nimbly curdled like sour milk” wondering why the “storm that has risen is not stopping.” Rights, the poem says has been “crammed into a sack” and those who protest are in jail.
Despondency creeps in the poet’s mind even as she helplessly tries to find out her address (read the address of democracy). “…Can’t find my address” though “everything around is so familiar” they seem much “unknown.”
And she ends with an appeal saying, “heart, find my address.”
Incidentally, the Chief Minister had on Thursday reacted to the arrest of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram saying “I am depressed, I am sad” at how things have been done. Without delving much into the legality of the senior Congress leader’s arrest she said “the process of his arrest is sad. It is bad. It makes me depressed.”
Hours after giving her reaction the Chief Minister whose own party colleagues including senior Trinamool leaders are facing graft charges and CBI probe wrote the poem.
Meanwhile, in an apparent bid to counter Trinamool Congress’ reach-out measures like “Didi ke Bolo” through which the people are asked to dial a specific number to let the Chief Minister know about their woes for immediate reddressal the State BJP has devised a series of programmes called “Cha Chakra.”
State BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Friday said “we are going to launch Cha Chakra as a part of our mass outreach programme.” He said that earlier only he used to involve people in Cha Chakra through which the people were engaged in brief tea sessions so that they could make their problems known. “But now the other leaders too will take part in Cha Chakra.”