Dear CM, et all

I have written, rewritten and then deleted it all. For the first time in my life, I felt writing will not make any sense. West Bengal is currently the only state in India to be ruled by a woman CM. A (so called) fiery crusader for justice, she has defeated the elitist Left, who viewed her as an upstart from the slums. She and her band of women MPs has screamed their lungs out when they spotted injustice against women anywhere in India. 

But this time the injustice came knocking at your own door, and it became just a tad too close for comfort. 

The immaculate English speaking ex-investment banker MP was suddenly totally silent. There is a reason I mention her. Every global investment bank operating in India, operates through the Global service centers, and with global stakeholders often have many women working at night. There are days, I leave office late. My best friend often has left office extremely late, and continues to do so. And so has many of my friends in office. 

Shame, Ms Banerjee? But then did you ever have shame? Did you have any shame when you gave orders to transfer an honest officer multiple times during your tenure as the Railway minister? But then by this time you probably have understood that not everyone can be bought. Baba and me often laugh when we recollect it now. Remember the Park Street rape and then IPS Damyanti Sen being transferred right after she cracked an almost impossible case and your press conference saying that it was an ‘orchestrated event’? 

Your fan boys and fan girls think you are a human equivalent of a Kalashnikov rifle, firing on all cylinders. “I am a politician, but I am humane individual. Never did anything wrong to anyone.” It is your administration that mismanaged the probe and tried to project the sexual assault of a doctor as a suicide. Isn’t that wrong? 

But then, Ms Banerjee you were the icon of those days. In a family full of communists, I almost admired you. Who can forget a 34 year old you, lying on a stretcher in an ambulance, head and right arm heavily bandaged, almost rhetorically warning the communists that a blood-soaked opponent had emerged in the figure of “didi,” the elder sister. 

It was you after that near fatal injury, who led a sit-in protest, alongside an almost teenaged hearing- and speech-impaired rape victim and her mother, and  blocked the chief minister’s chamber inside Writers’ Building, the seat of the West Bengal government. I respected you then. 

There was a picture of you as the police tried to forcibly remove you - pulled by the hair, with blows raining down - as you screamed and swore at the communists. Do you recognize that woman, Ms Banerjee any more? Or power has made a cynic out of you. 

I sincerely hope that ‘Khela Hobe’ is turned to ‘Khela shesh’ & all your pet IPS officers and doctors actually bear the burnt of their actions. And, Time magazine remember to write an article on her. This time not on how she ‘’out-Marxed the Marxists”, but “The state, that is me and I have wronged it”.