As West Bengal gears up for another charged election season, the air thick with slogans and strategy, veteran musician Kabir Suman is turning inward -- revisiting a quieter, more personal politics shaped by memory, contradiction and time.
In a reflective conversation with Indian media, Suman admits his past now feels “gray,” as if the sharp edges of experience have softened.
“Not everything is clear anymore,” he says. “Many things seem to have rusted.”
But some echoes remain.
The first thing that returns is not ideology, but sound -- a slogan from childhood, chanted in neighbourhood streets: “Vote for what, sickle and ears of corn.”
It was rhythm before it was politics, something he and his friends repeated without fully understanding.
Until one warning broke the innocence: “Don’t say their slogans, they don’t believe in God.”
That moment stayed.
His earliest voting memory is equally fragmented -- a crowded polling station, pushing bodies, raised voices, and finally, the quiet mark of ink on his finger.
A small act, but one that would grow in meaning over time.
At home, politics was never singular.
His father leaned Congress, his mother stood firmly with the Left. Yet Suman remembers no bitterness -- only difference, lived side by side.
There was a time, however, when he rejected it all.
As a young man, he gravitated toward pro-Naxalite thought, questioning the value of elections altogether.
“I felt change would come through revolution,” he recalls. “Voting, then, felt secondary -- almost irrelevant.”
But time reshaped that belief.
His first real participation in the electoral process shifted something fundamental.
While he never formally joined politics, he began to see voting not as an illusion, but as a necessary voice.
And still, contradictions linger.
He remembers the smell of ballot boxes from when his father served as a polling officer.
He remembers, too, an almost surreal moment -- his father deliberately spoiling a vote, smiling as confusion spread.
No explanation. Just a gesture.
For Suman, politics has never been a fixed position. It is memory, music, rebellion and reflection -- all at once.
And as the state moves toward another election, his story reminds us:
“Sometimes, the most powerful politics is the one we carry within.”
