Mamata’s Knight out

Eden Gardens was packed, inside and outside; but there was no match being played there. It was an ecstatic Mamata Banerjee and her team who led a victory lap for the Kolkata Knight Riders after a felicitation ceremony outside Writers Buildings that included flowers, shawls and shondesh for the players and glitzy team owners. And, in the stadium, the West Bengal chief minister actually shouted into the mike, goading the crowd to chant the korbo-lorbo-jeetbo war cry. News channels went live to capture the moment. The crowd, too, went berserk outside the VIP gates and had to be pushed out with police batons. It was as if the entire city, specially its glitterati, had converged to participate in the celebrations. What’s more: the West Bengal Governor was present during this post-IPL tamasha. It was indeed a tamasha. The Bengali film fraternity was present to full strength, desperately trying to snatch the attention from the victorious team members. They refused to budge an inch from the front row, even as players disembarked from their bus towards a smiling Mamata outside. The chief minister took it upon herself to even control the crowds. She was all over the place, mike in hand, giving orders to people, press, policemen, and Shah Rukh Khan. “Shah Rukh, ekhane esho (Shah Rukh, come here)”, she said, delegating some chore for him. And, the obedient Shah Rukh Khan gave an award-winning performance of that gracious, humble Bengal brand ambassador, occasionally showering affection on his fiery didi. Or was that act to avoid him being labelled a Maoist? Poor guy is already barred from Wankhede stadium. He has been sued for smoking in Rajasthan stadium. The US is always asking why his name is Khan. Keeping didi in good humour is probably the wisest decision. Television viewers across the country were treated to some news reporting fun too, when channel reporters screamed into their mikes over the Bengali film brigade’s attitude. “They have no right to be there. These players have sweated it out and won for the city. These actors have no right to be at the centre-stage,” shouted the Times Now correspondent. These high-decibel sound-bites, though an ear-sore for viewers, showed another angle of the tamasha. So why were these IPL winners given a state welcome as never seen in the earlier four editions? True, KKR won after a five-year-wait. But was it really a victory befitting a state honour? There can be arguments for and against. The fans will obviously agree that their heroes made their city proud. That the city is marked bold on the IPL map after those four years of poor showing. The critics will call it a waste of time, energy and money. I would like it see it this way. Mamata showed a lot of promise when she was sworn in. But she has not been able to evolve from being a street-fighter to an administrator. She has been berated for continuing to be a stormy petrel, rather than managing a debt-riddled state. She has been a trouble-maker rather than a trouble-shooter most of the time. Her weakness comes across with her Maoist paranoia and the subsequent intolerance to uneasy cartoons and debates. In this mood, Mamata’s goading the crowd to sing the KKR’s korbo-lorbo-jeetbo anthem was parochialism at its best. But it seemed like her desperate attempt to prove a point through the IPL victory. After all, IPL is a corporatized sport. And it really need not be made into such a big, proud moment. All those who have been associated in the event have laughed loudly all the way to the bank, ruining for others all those precious and productive man/woman hours spent in front of the television set and stadia from April 4 to May 27. I see this entire exercise not as a routine felicitation event, but as an emotional appeal to the people of Bengal to support her and her endeavours. She is trying to give her message to the youth of Bengal to work, fight and win (that is what Korbo-lorbo-jeetbo stands for). And, to be fair to her, she needs the youth to wake up and fight to get Bengal onto the political and economic map of the country.