Mamata's memoirs & how to throw the book at her

As the nation, or at least the English-news-consuming parts, watched the drama about whether Salman Rushdie would be allowed to beam into the Jaipur Literature Festival, chief minister Mamata Banerjee was raiding a festival of her own. It was the legendary Kolkata Book Fair inauguration and on any other day, the news of the chief minister releasing three of her books would have piqued the curiosity of all news editors.

Unfortunately, it was hard to look east when Rushdie was venting about Jaipur, but I hope for Congressmen’s sake that at least they weren’t too distracted playing Satanic politics. I hope that they, like me, are taking advantage of the fact that Mamatadi’s memoirs have finally been translated into English, and they can start hunting for some tips about how to improve their relationship.

My Unforgettable Memories brought out by Roli Books sounds like this mushy, emotional account of how a woman made it to the top of the political game despite the odds and in many ways, it is that. But it is also such an insight into a woman that the Congress is struggling to deal with right now. The woman who has decided she is going to play the spoiler-in-chief on any of the Centre’s plans, from the Lokpal bill, to pension reform, Teesta treaty and, of course, FDI. The Congress thinks that having Bengali-speaking Jairam Ramesh as a special envoy to Bengal is enough, but it wouldn’t hurt if they all read Didi’s memoirs as homework.

They would find out that despite all the bad blood that has flowed lately, Mamata Banerjee is still quite a softie for the Gandhi family. In her memoirs, she even suggests that if Sonia Gandhi had taken over the party presidency a few months earlier in December 1997, Mamata may not have left the Congress. In fact, she reveals how even so far back, much before the Congress gained victory under her in 2004, Sonia Gandhi confided in her saying she wasn’t acceptable within her own party as she was a foreigner. She reveals the intimate nature of her relationship with the Congress president, where she was received at 10 Janpath at 11 at night but alone, as the Congress president was in her night dress.

In the last few weeks, Mamata Banerjee and the local Congress have traded insults by calling each other the Left’s B-team, but it was only when I read her autobiography that I realised how old that relationship of distrust was.

Whether it was her selection as West Bengal’s Youth Congress head, her Lok Sabha election from South Kolkata, or her inclusion in the cabinet, Mamata has trusted very few in the Congress other than Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. Deepa Dasmunshi may be her nemesis in the state now, but when she first came to Parliament, she would take her complaints about Deepa’s husband Priyaranjan to Rajiv Gandhi. And Mamata claims that when Rajiv visited Bengal just days before his assasination, she had a premonition about his death, recalling how news of the tragedy had a debilitating impact on her. She says that even today, in times of trouble, she looks to Rajiv’s photo in her room for inspiration.

So, if Uttar Pradesh doesn’t go as many central Congress leaders have planned, these are the references Delhi should invoke. They should get Pranabda to actually scold her like the kid sister she thinks she is to him. He should tell her to stop badmouthing them and playing games with them like she is doing right now in Manipur. And Pranab Mukherjee should also promise that they will implement some of the hints that Mamata has left in her books — how the TMC needs a lot of TLC, especially from the high command.

Postscript: Speaking of autobiographies, Mamata Banerjee seems to be catching up with Mayawati’s style of recording her life for posterity. Till now, Mamata has written 33 books in Bangla. Her aides say she writes all the time, jotting down notes while she is waiting for meetings or en route to appointments. She displays the same prolific nature when it comes to paintings. I once sat with her while she chatted with journalists, and just in the course of an hour’s interaction, she made three abstract paintings. Her colleague in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, also trusts nobody else to tell her story. She replies to no journalist, answers no questions, but furiously records every detail of her life, releasing volume after volume of her memoirs every birthday. They call it megalomaniacal, especially when it is clubbed with the statue-building spree, but maybe Mayawati and Mamata are just women who want to make sure they go down in history by telling their own stories. I wonder what they will say about the next chapter, though — the battle between Trinamool and BSP in UP.

Sunetra Choudhury is an anchor/ reporter for NDTV and is the author of the election travelogue
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On Twitter: @sunetrac