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When CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat sent a bouquet of flowers and a get-well-soon message to Manmohan Singh before the latter went in for his heart surgery, there was more than mere courtesy to the gesture.

Yes, there’s a distinct thaw between the two men whose acrimonious wrangling over the Indo-US nuclear deal held the UPA government to ransom for almost a year and finally led to a bitter parting of ways. In these uncertain times, every political party needs as many friends as it can gather to cross the threshold for government formation. The first motto of today’s politics is there can be no full stops, no permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

The warming process began a few weeks before the flowers went, when Karat wrote two letters to the PM. He may have been a tad out of practice because he had stopped sending missives after the nuclear deal ceased to be an issue. But it obviously didn’t matter because Manmohan Singh responded promptly.

Singh was careful to avoid direct contact with the man he had always considered a thorn in his side, but he got a key aide to telephone Karat with assurances that the misgivings expressed in the letters would be addressed. One letter warned against curbing press freedom in the name of national security. The other stated clearly that there should be no bailout for scam-tainted Satyam.

On both issues, the PM conveyed that he, too, was of the same opinion. It’s funny how these two, once on opposite sides of the fence on virtually every issue, are on the same page these days. Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

With Karat and Manmohan Singh burying the hatchet, it was inevitable that other contacts would also revive. After Singh’s positive noises on Karat’s letters, Sitaram Yechury called on Pranab Mukherjee and Ahmed Patel. There was much bonhomie when Yechury appeared at Mukherjee’s residence after a gap of six months. Haven’t seen you for a long time, Mukherjee’s aides cooed. Don’t worry, Yechury replied, now you will see plenty of me. It was almost like the good old days when Karat’s Man Friday would meet Sonia Gandhi’s point man for the Left several times in a week.

You could ask, what’s the big deal in a meeting or a letter. It’s just an exchange of pleasantries, after all. But something is definitely cooking there. The day before Manmohan Singh went in for surgery, when it was known that Mukherjee would have to stand in for the PM while he recuperated, Sonia Gandhi added another assignment to his already heavy portfolio. She made Mukherjee president of the Congress party in West Bengal.

This was the biggest signal that the Congress wants to keep the door open for a possible understanding with the Left after the Lok Sabha polls. Mukherjee’s appointment is a snub to Mamata Banerjee, who is desperately seeking an electoral alliance with the Congress in Bengal. He is dead against it. In internal discussions, Mukherjee has argued that an alliance would only benefit Banerjee’s party and there’s no guarantee that she’ll stay with the Congress after the elections if she has enough seats to leverage for ministerial berths in a hung Parliament.

Is the wheel coming full circle? We’ll know only when the election results come in and parties start jockeying to form the next government.

TAILPIECE
Amar Singh is feeling a bit out of sorts these days. Once the chief torchbearer of the “secular” parties, he is now facing stiff competition from Sharad Pawar. The NCP chief has announced his intention of hosting a meeting of secular, non-Congress parties, to which he has invited the Left. This is something Amar Singh has been trying hard to do but with little success. Even old friend Lalu Prasad, who was responsible in part for facilitating the Samajwadi Party’s entry into the UPA, is keeping his distance from Amar Singh these days.