Raina: Jyoti Basu

Jyoti Basu (1914 - 2010)

Editor's note: Veteran Indian communist leader and prominent politician, Jyoti Basu, died on January 17, 2010. He was 95.

Badri Raina wrote the following poem in honour of Jyoti Basu just before his death.

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Jyoti Basu

by Badri Raina

As I write, you seem set

To bid adieu—

Your life’s work more than done.

We would be truly greedy

To ask more of you.

What man walked so straight

And for so long

With a single thought in mind—

To do what you could

For fellow men and women

At the end of the line.

You solved what you could solve;

Neither birth nor accomplishment

Vitiated that simple resolve.

Your stern, Spartan selflessness

Made no song and dance;

No sophisticated twist of theory

Stymied your advance.

Communist beyond compare,

You knew your country

As cannily

As the bird knows his tree.

And, doing so, you did not

Ask for the moon,

But gave to the morning and the afternoon

Appropriate remedy.

Never did your worst adversary

For a moment doubt

That your life was never your own,

But given wholly

To those that were down.

Every one’s Jyoti Babu,

It will be no fault of yours

If those that grew into sentience

During your precious longevity

Sometimes fail to see

The straight and narrow, running,

Instead, round and round

The mulberry tree.

Your counsel would still be:

“however starstruck the neo-liberal world,

Be not among the busybodies,

But the destitute majority.”

As we say most grateful bye,

Beloved comrade leader,

Smile upon us just one last time

So we may know

That you hope in our strivings

As you depart in flesh

But never ever from the people's heart.