“In nightmares and terror, you protected me on your lap, you affectionate mother…” Ritabrata Banerjee was passionately reciting the full version of Rabindranath Tagore's Jana Gana Mana on March 9 when Mamata Banerjee abruptly cut him short.
Then a Rajya Sabha MP of Mamata’s Trinamool Congress (TMC), he was on the dais of her demonstration in Kolkata protesting the Special Intensive Revision of the voter roll. He loves to recite long poems and to intersperse poetry with political rhetoric in his speeches. That time, the party chief got impatient. “Ritabrata, give culture a break and focus on your subject, which is the SIR,” she told him. He obliged. He never had much of a say in the party in any case.
