In New Delhi in the Fifties, one had a nodding acquaintance with a lady who, gossip said, was in her elements in raucous cocktail and late-night dinner parties. She must have been a ravishing beauty once, but was past her prime, with scars of fast living on her face and body. Social distance only lent further disenchantment to the view.

A few years later, this chance acquaintance turned up one evening at the apartment one was occupying in a foreign city. She had failed to get a hotel booking, and would be most grateful if she could be put up for the night. She was reeking of alcohol; even so, it would have been rude to deny her the use of the spare bedroom for the night. A dinner followed; she ate little, but produced from her bag her own supply of liquid refreshment. After some desultory moments, slunk in an armchair, she suddenly started to blurt out the story of her life. Despite her state of inebriation, her narration was extraordinarily lucid.

She hailed from a fairly well-known village in Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu, was the only issue of her parents. They were top-notch Iyengars. Her father was a celebrated scholar, with deep knowledge of Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu classics, and an authority on the Vedas and the Upanishads. He had, in addition, achieved renown as an astrologer whose prognoses were, more often than not, eerily correct. Conservative to the core, he was rigid in his social attitudes and had sternly believed as much in the infallibility of the Hindu caste structure as in the guidance of the stars.

The daughter, a picture of sweet innocence, had just crossed fifteen. One afternoon, the father asked her to step into his study. He had, he informed the daughter, fixed her marriage with an Iyengar young man working in the Central secretariat in New Delhi. The wedding was to be solemnized within the next fortnight. He considered it his duty to let the daughter know that he had studied most carefully her horoscope as well as that of the would-be groom. He had also delved into the texts of relevant holy books and astrological literature. He had, besides, made independent enquiries about the boy. Her future husband, he was sorry to inform his daughter, was evil incarnate, a bounder, and a moral wreck. He would, the reading of the stars suggested, descend to the lowest depths and be instrumental in dragging down his wife as well to that state of hell. But it was not given to mortals to defy either the writ of the scriptures or the fate determined by the movement of stars. The daughter must prepare herself to face the destiny decided for her by God Almighty.

The daughter did not even realize what was happening to her; she was, in any case, in great awe of her father. The wedding duly took place, the boy took away his bride to New Delhi. What the girl’s father had predicted began to unfold with greater rapidity. The young man was devoid of all moral compunctions. He regularly attended wild parties where alcohol would flow freely; the accompanying pastime was illegal betting. Money naturally was always in short supply. The girl’s jewels disappeared within three months. To earn ready cash, the wretch of a husband forced his wife into physical liaison with all types of shady characters. The situation could not last for long. The husband was soon arrested for embezzlement of office funds, lost his job and was sent away to prison for ten years.

The slip of a girl was by now a wiser woman. The nightmare she went through had transformed her. She went to court and got a divorce. It was open to her to return to her father’s place in Tiruchirapalli. But no, the hardest of hard iron had entered her soul. Her ego took charge: she must take her revenge on the father who had knowingly ruined her life; she would, reaching the very pit of dissoluteness. She had learnt to speak excellent English, and, thanks to her husband and his associates, was fairly familiar with the dark corridors in the nation’s capital. She turned herself into a high-class call girl. That was what she, more or less, had been for the past fifteen years; her latest catch was a decrepit Spanish count. She had blackened the name of her family, that was her pride — and her triumph.

As she approached the end of her story, the lady collapsed in an ocean of tears, and finally dropped off to sleep. She rose early the next morning and bade a demure goodbye.

But was she not egregiously wrong in scripting her leftover life in the manner she did? By choosing to go downhill all the way, she, as a matter of fact, toed the line her father’s prognostication had laid down for her. A liberated woman because of all she had gone through, she could have exercised her free will and walked away from the fate the stars had supposedly ordained for her. Instead, she conducted herself like a marionette. She was no rebel, but a conformist.

The analogy may, at first sight, appear somewhat otiose. The current state of affairs in West Bengal nonetheless induces one to remember the turbulence in the lady’s life and its denouement. The Left Front government in the state is, at this moment, as the American expression goes, stymied. Recent incidents have presented on a platter hitherto undreamt of opportunities to its enemies. There is little percentage for the Front in condemning political adversaries and conspirators, real or imaginary, for the predicament it is in; these species owe it to themselves to avail of the opportunities presented to them.

The problem lies elsewhere. Were the Left Front, or, to be precise, the leadership of the Front’s principal constituent, to stick to the policy it is currently enamoured of — to hand over the responsibility for the development of industry, services and general infrastructure to the capitalist class, confining the State’s role to that of a passive intermediary — it is going to hit a cul de sac. In case an attempt is made to repeat in any other part of the state the pattern of land acquisition tried out in Singur and Nandigram, chances are that major sections of the rural population may rise in revolt. Circumstances would then tend to assume a truly dangerous dimension. In the state, the political alternative to the Left Front is, frankly, no alternative at all. The main opposition is sadly lacking in both direction and scruples; its natural instinct is to revel in chaos. While some well-meaning groups and persons are at present keeping it company, they are without clout and can be marginalized in no time.

At the same time, should no declaration of renunciation be forthcoming from the leaders of the Front of the policy they have been pursuing, it would be an impasse that might only aggravate uncertainty, and, in turn, lead to large-scale disorder. In such an eventuality, people could begin to miss the distinction between a political combination that, standing on its ego, lets things drift towards chaos and another one that takes to chaos as a duck takes to water. The state could, as a consequence, head towards the climax of a great tragedy. The lady mentioned above collaborated with the destiny that wrote the skit of her life; would those shepherding the Left Front in West Bengal emulate her folly?