Mamata Banerjee visited Bangladesh on a three-day tour a few days ago. Her entourage included Prosenjeet Chatterjee -- the famous actor who won’t quit despite old age. She was, of course, aware about the recent cocktail attacks in Bangladesh. This seemed like the best time to bring Chatterjee along.
Sushma and Mamata had exchanged notes before Mamata’s visit. Before she left for Dhaka, Mamata told the Indian State Assembly that she would not say anything about Teesta.
“Teesta” and “bilateral” were the two words that appeared everywhere. Mamata also added “historic.”
What came out of the Teesta deal, we do not know. But everyone looked happy and sang songs. The word Teesta was mentioned a lot too. But she kept her words to the State Assembly (not something that she does often) and stopped there -- just the word itself and nothing more.
During the interviews, the cameramen had a lot of trouble. Nobody could tell where Mamata was looking. She seemed deeply moved. We wondered why. But she was all praises about Bangladesh. So we were happy.
Mamata and Hasina seemed to get along really well. Mamata definitely got along with her better than when David Cameron visited Kolkata. With Cameron, when strange accents collided, nobody understood anything and decided to avoid the embarrassment by agreeing to whatever proposals lay on the table. This had happened once before -- when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour.
Thanks to Modi, now there is too much pressure on politicians to be pleasant to foreigners. Even Mamata delivered!