It’s quite in tradition for the Bengali imagination to coin catchy limerick-like slogans that rhyme native words with English. But the latest one that’s flooding social media timelines looks set to have a long shelf life—even in its zestful goofiness, it snaps up an entire zeitgeist, at least within the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). “Akashey batasey positive energy / Naam ta mone achhe na: Abhishek Banerjee,” it goes. Yes, the air seems charged with positive energy, and party faithful do attribute a lot of it to the 37-year-old nephew of Mamata Banerjee, the anointed inheritor. Usually taciturn with the media, he’s razor-sharp when he allows himself an occasional sound bite, and bitingly sarcastic when speaking from the Opposition benches in the Lok Sabha, where he now fronts a young and very audible TMC contingent. He also knows how to carry an aura around himself. Not a scion’s glamour inherited for free, but the hard-earned halo of authority of one who has fought, and won, in the toxic dust-laden battlefields of Bengal. Some of it, they say, were even internal to the TMC.
