Mumbai: Call it dressing down or inverted snobbery. One must hand it to the minimalist chief minister of West Bengal — Mamata Banerjee – she has her heart in the right place, or so it appears, even though it keeps having skirmishes with the Left. Regardless of the occasion, she is immaculately clad in a cotton sari, usually a simple, crisp, white affair, with varying borders and designs, and will stand her ground, every inch of it, in her trusty flip-flops (hawaii chappals), even on the celebratory red carpet.
And this does not change, be it the opulent Ambani wedding of the century or just another day at work. So, it did not matter that she was rubbing shoulders with the who’s who of the film industry, foreign and desi politicians, business bigwigs and tech titans. It did not matter that most invitees to the wedding had spent months planning what they would wear and proceeded to fork out extravagant amounts of money to ensure they made the right impression at the event.
On December 12, Didi arrived at the wedding of Mukesh and Nita Ambani’s daughter Isha with the son of Ajay and Swati Piramal’s son Anand, just the way she has been, since her debut in politics. There was no question of strutting around in heavy silks, ornate jewellery and swanky sandals, just because the others did so. The rest of the world can prance around in its Manolo Blahniks, Louis Vuittons, Jimmy Choos, Armanis and Guccis, it’s not worth the thong off her hawaiis, for all she cares.
No man is an island, according to the English poet and cleric John Donne, but he did not quite reckon with the likes of our Mamata, who stood out as herself, among the well-heeled, in her ‘homespun’, traditional Mamata saree in subdued shades and her aam sandals. And she breezed in with her characteristic gait – the slippers going flip-flop – and drifted out with the same consummate ease. Pranaam.
