And after the demise of his leader, he has just begun to rediscover the meaning of loneliness, in a hard way, of course. Meet Joykrishna Ghosh, Basu’s personal assistant or rather a close follower of Basu’s shadow, who outpoured his grief for his inability to fulfil the last wish of Jyotibabu, as he affectionately called him.
“He (Basu) was desperate to get home. He asked me repeatedly, ‘Joy, please take me home’,” Ghosh recalled as tears rolled down his eyes. Basu was living at Indira Bhavan, his Salt Lake residence since 1989 and his last wish was to return to Indira Bhavan and die over there. “He was like my father, my family. It’s hard to even imagine that I won’t see him at Indira Bhavan again”. As a huge crowd followed Basu’s last journey from the private hospital to Peace Haven, Ghosh sailed into the past, fondly recollecting a man he knew from 1977.
Media persons familiar with Ghosh were too aware that without him, it was next to impossible to get access to Basu. Shortly after his appointment, Ghosh built a rare rapport with this “man of strict principles who knew how to strike a balance between the personal and professional lives” and with whom, he had developed “very special ties.”
