Jyoti Basu tasted tea for the first time when he was 21

Jyoti Basu tasted his first cup of tea at the age of 21 when he was in London as his father Nishikanta Basu, a physician by profession, disallowed it.

Basu's father also forbade his three children, including Basu from seeing films and theatres, according to the 95-year-old leader's authorised biographer Surabhi Banerjee.

Young Basu longed to see Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, the Phantom of the Opera, The Blue Angel, City Lights then showing here, but could not.

After Basu became chief minister of West Bengal, his government sponsored several films including Satyajit Ray's Hirak Rajar Desh(Kingdom of Diamonds) in 1980 and also a documentary on Sukumar Roy, the pioneer of nonsense rhyme in Bengal, on his birth centenary in 1987.

Sukumar Roy was the father of prominent filmmaker Satyajit Ray.