It was the cold November of 1980. I had just finished university and accompanied my father on a long tour through many states. Visiting Calcutta (the city had yet to change her name) was what I looked forward to most, having grown up admiring Bengali literature, cinema, politics and football. My excitement overflowed when we met Mrinal Sen and his wife, Geeta, at the maestro's residence on 14 Beltala Road. Mrinalda came with us when my father told him we were going to the CPI(M) headquarters on Alimuddin Street. Sen wanted to pay homage to a departed comrade whose body was kept in state at the party office.

I saw many prominent leaders at the party office, including Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, who I had only seen in photographs. It was only three years after the Left Front formed its first government to begin its historic three-decade-long unbroken innings in power. Then, I followed my father into a smaller room where I saw a thick-glassed young man in the traditional white Bengali dhoti-kurta with a burning cigarette between his fingers. He was Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, then a 33-year-old rising star in Bengal CPI(M) and the Minister of Information.

For the next hour, I sat wide-eyed, listening to the excited conversation between my father and his younger comrade, meandering through literature, cinema, politics, etc. I remember Buddhadeb speaking passionately in his Bengali-accented English about a new Latin American author named Gabriel Marquez and his One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had little clue that the author and his novel would soon win the Nobel or become household names even in Kerala.

In my young and romantic imagination, Buddhababu personified everything I adored in my Bengali fantasy: his radical politics, passion for literature, cinema, and sports or even his kurta and Kolhapuri sandals. I even thought he resembled my favourite Bengali hero, Soumitra Chatterjee of Apur Sansar.

Aptly called Bengal’s last Bhadralok Communist, Buddhadeb, who died recently at 80, was born into a North Kolkata Brahmin family of priests, Sanskrit scholars, and writers that included the revolutionary poet Sukanta Bhattacharjee. Communism stole Buddha's heart at the Presidency College, the crucible of Calcutta’s radical politics, where he graduated in Bengali literature. The scion of the priestly family turned a confirmed atheist.

After a brief teaching stint, Buddhadeb became CPI(M)’s full-timer and was made the state secretary of the DYFI during the late sixties. Those were CPI(M)’s hard days, with the Naxalite movement weaning away the youth like a magnet, followed by the violent Emergency reign under Siddharth Sankar Ray. Besides Buddha, many youngsters helped the party weather the crisis. They included Biman........

© Mathrubhumi English