Chapter 9: The Silent Grandfather

The bus wheels hummed against asphalt, and Kaurav found himself thinking of his grandfather's silence. During the Singur and Nandigram uproar, he had still been in school, his world small enough that politics seemed distant, abstract. The opposition party in West Bengal had only one member in the Lok Sabha then. He couldn't have imagined how deeply politics would eventually permeate every corner of his life.

His sympathy for leftist ideology had been inherited, passed down through family dinner conversations and his grandfather's patient explanations. This inheritance made today's Madam—the Chief Minister—his natural ideological adversary, though he hadn't understood it then.

During the Singur controversy, his grandfather had supported the Left Front government, explaining the importance of employment and development with the conviction of someone who had lived through decades of political change.

"Then why did she fast for twenty-six days?" Kaurav had asked.

"Because