`I'm not too much into campaigning now'

KOLKATA: He's the lion in winter. The CPM headquarters on Alimuddin Street in Kolkata is hung with rows of black-and-white portraits of legendary comrades, from Comrade B T Ranadive to A K Gopalan to P Sundaraiyya. A rickety scaffolding girds the rambling building, as if the Left is getting only a half-hearted re-paint. Former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee arrives at Alimuddin Street every day in his bulletproof white Ambassador, surrounded by a police posse.He has aged, seems tired, the shock of grey hair noticeably thinner.
He may no longer be the face of CPM, but is still as distinctive as the comrades on the wall. Sitting behind a bulky conference table in an air-conditioned meeting room and looking through newspapers, he tells TOI: “My health is not what it was,“ in an attempt to explain why he has stayed out of the election campaign so far.
Once he was almost a Gorbachevlike figure, someone trying to reform the Left from within, Jyoti Basu's successor who outstripped him in popularity and clout. But a decade is clearly an eternity in politics.
Ten years ago at this same Alimuddin Street office, he had held a jampacked press conference. He was the victorious and confident chief minister whose “Buddhaeconomics“ had brought the Left Front a thundering three-fourths majority . “This is what you call a brute majority ,“ he had quipped then. At that time, biker gangs of warrior Red cadres zoomed up and down outside, their warlike chants drowning out any other sounds.
Today , Alimuddin Street is bereft of crowds, abandoned by the media. Party cadres file in and out of bare 1970s-style rooms with sheafs of papers piled on tables. No computers here, instead a few typewriters. Fraying kaste-hathuri (hammer and sickle) banners flutter on windows. In a hall once crowded by the faithful, there are only 3-4 senior citizens nodding over magazines.
In his heyday, it was said that the ide ologically rigid Alimuddin Street tried to stymie Buddhadeb's government, attacking him from within as he attempted to forge a new economics. Today , he is a regular at the same party office with which he was once at loggerheads, the almost invisible apparatchik back in the fold.
So, what does the “ex-CM“ -as he is called in Alimuddin Street -do these days? He holds meetings with workers, sees to various problems that might arise in the party, aides tell us. He is reportedly also writing a book.
Yet, his health has broken down.Decades of heavy smoking (he's given up now) has left him with a lung infec tion and his voice is suppressed and hoarse. Is he not campaigning much at all? “I am not that involved in much campaigning now. I am not going to the districts, others are,“ he says. Is he happy at some reports that the Left-Congress alliance might be heading for some gains? “Well, the situation is still developing; so we have to wait and see.“
He is reticent and reserved, and although he smiles readily , clearly prefers to be left alone, as he turns away repeatedly to glance at newspapers or watch TV . Is he worried about the reports of alleged rigging that the Trinamool is accused of doing? “Yes, that is worrying,“ he says. The irony of the Left Front's allegations with rigging elections when “scientific rigging“ was once called a Left invention hangs heavy .
Is the Left fighting this election with Is the Left fighting this election with a newfound energy , given that Mamata Banerjee is battling anti-incumbency?
Buddhadeb refuses to answer and stares straight ahead while an aide pipes up, “We are doing what we can, the rest is up to the people.“
A seen-it-all tiredness pervades Alimuddin Street. Election preparations are on, but comrades prefer to watch IPL in the TV room. There's a desultory air, most appear to be going through the motions. In this round of the battle for Bengal, Buddhadeb almost openly admits to being in semi-retirement. But as TOI takes his leave, the former CM reminds, “I am addressing a roadshow on the 19th. Please do come.“