We shared a personal rapport that went back to long ago. I distinctly remember his frequent visits to Kolkata during the days when he had gone underground, when the party was banned. Surjeet was extremely close to two of our party leaders, one was comrade Pramode Dasgupta and the other comrade Jyoti Basu.
I vividly recall the incident when he was in Kolkata, in hiding. He had put up at a house in Ballygunge Circular Road. I was asked by Dasgupta to hand over a sealed envelope to Surjeet at his place. I went looking out for the address all by myself. I could not even ask people for directions. On meeting him, I handed over the letter and asked if there was any message I could communicate back to Dasgupta. He gave me a letter to take back.
Comrade Surjeet had a very special relation with Bengal. He knew most of us by our names. He would address me as “beta”. Once I had visited his home in Punjab. He was lying on a bed and reading a newspaper. He took one look at me and said, “Beta, aa gaya. Beta ko pani pilayo. Beta ko chaye pilao.” He knew we loved tea. But I did not like tea with milk. But I had to drink a glassful of tea with milk because Surjeet had said “beta ko chaye pilao.” He was a laborious person and a very hard working party activist. I remember how he would always carry his own luggage, however heavy it was. He never cared about his health when party assigned him for a work. He would travel to distant places to attend meetings despite his frail health.
He had undertaken an eight-hour-long flight to travel from Toronto to Vancouver to attend one such meeting. It was at a time when even I was in the USA. He had taken my phone number and one day called me up asking me to come to Vancouver for the meeting. I had to go and he asked me to address the gathering. When I was wondering in which language I should be speaking in, he suggested that I address the audience in Hindi. When I told him I am not fluent in Hindi, he said, “jo janta hai waise hi bolna parega”.
His death is not an individual loss or the party’s loss alone. It is a loss for the entire Left movement. We had referred to the nine founder members of the Politburo as “navratnas.” There were only two “ratnas” till today. With Surjeet’s demise, we have only Jyoti Basu as the last “ratna”.
His demise has left a vacuum in the leadership. He had a rare quality. He could initiate dialogues even with the opposition and those leaders who were not opposition as such but were somewhere in between. Even Jyoti Basu has this rare quality of initiating dialogues. We will have to fulfill Surjeet’s vacuum collectively.
I am feeling lonely: Basu
“The news of Comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet’s death has brought a sense of grief. We have worked together as colleagues for a long time. He was two years younger to me. It is hard to accept the fact that he has left us forever. I am feeling lonely without him. He had an important role in national politics as the party's national leader especially in bringing together the Left and democratic parties against the communal powers,” veteran CPM leader Jyoti Basu said in a statement on Friday.