"This is only a thing that media says," said Karat when asked in an interview to Malayala Manorama daily whether he agreed with the general perception that he was a most powerful politician controlling the UPA government by "remote" by virtue of being the leader of the supporting bloc.

As if to bolster his view that he was not powerful, Karat appeared to suggest that none of the suggestions being made by the Left front will be reflected in the coming General Budget.

"Let us see what is there in the coming budget. Not a single thing that we suggested could be considered in it," he said.

Skipping hotly debated issues like India-US nuclear deal, Karat in a wide-ranging interview talked about his work and recalled his student days in Chennai, his transition into a whole time communist and persons and events that influenced him.

Interestingly, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, whose policies he opposes the most, was his senior in Madras Christian College and even used to join the debates organized by a radical campus group.

"We had a group in the college, many of whom later joined the CPI-M. N Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, and Maithili Sivaraman who was in the UN were part of it. We had a journal called 'Radical Review."

Chidambaram used to join the debates we organised. But he did not maintain his relations with the group for long."

Karat rejected the suggestion that his wife Brinda became a member of the CPI-M polit bureau because of his influence.

"Brinda is as senior as me in the party. You marry somebody, who is also a politician and who shares the same ideology. Then that mutually helps to reinforce political beliefs of each other," he added.

Karat came to know Brinda during his trips to Calcutta on party assignments. Brinda was already in the party and they decided to marry after she was assigned to work in Delhi.

"The decision was ours. We sought the party's permission. The marriage was arranged by the party during the emergency days," he said.

Karat said the late E M S Namboodiripad, P Sundarayya and A K Gopalan were the Communist leaders who influenced him most and shaped his role in the CPI-M after he made a personal decision to be a party worker on his return from Edinburgh University studying politics and economics.

Born to Keralite parents in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1948, his father Padmanabhan Nair from Ottappalamin Palakkad district was a clerk in railway service.

As a six-month-old, Karat was brought to Kerala by his mother Radhamma and they spent their next five years in Palakkad before the family left for Burma again, where he spent another four years.

As his mother was keen to give a good education to Karat she settled in Chennai soon while her husband was working in Bihar and Bengal and died when Prakash was 13.

Prakash had his education in Madras Christian College School and the Madras Christian College from where he took MSC.

" I was shy boy. Bit of an introspect too. I had lost my younger sister when we were in Burma."

Karat's mother worked as an insurance agent in Chennai to bring up her son. She bought a house, which was rented out and she and Prakash living in its outhouse.

"Study expenses were not a problem as there had been scholarship all through my student days. I had studied on scholarship from ninth standard in Chennai to Edinburgh University in Scotland," he said.

Like any middle class child in India, he grew up in a religious atmosphere and his mother used to take him to temples and even imparted him Sanskrit lessons till he was 14.

But things changed since the college days and the struggle of the Vietnamese people against imperialism became a major influence to turn to communism.

"In those days, I did not even know the differences between the CPI and CPI-M. I was a good reader and I started turning my interests to issues concerning Indian communist parties. The formation of the united front government in Kerala triggered lot of debate about the stand of the CPI-M. Slowly, I began to understand issues and I got attracted to the CPI-M."

In 1969, Prakash, still a student in Edinburgh, met the party leader V P Chindan in Chennai and told him of his plan to give up studies to be a whole-timer in the party. Chindan, however, advised him to complete the studies and join the party as full-time worker.