As 93-year-old Harkishen Singh Surjeet recovered from coma to be discharged from a hospital in Noida on Tuesday, the CPI(M) patriarch was making news in Punjab for entirely different reasons.

Delhi-based author Darshan Singh recently released a book titled Bhau, chronicling the eight weeks beginning from the announcement of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections to the BJP’s defeat. What has got the state abuzz is the obvious parallels to current politicians, from Sharad Pawar, Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav to Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Dravidian leaders. And to a certain shrewd old man who helps ‘Madam’, a European, cobble together a coalition to keep the BJP away.

There are no doubts in Punjab about who that grand old man, called Karam Singh Kirti in the book, is.

Eighty-year-old Singh, who had a long stint with the Russian Consulate, doesn’t deny Surjeet was the inspiration for his protagonist Kirti. “I cannot think of any Left leader as great as him. He was the kingmaker, as we all know, and the architect of the Congress-led UPA’s ride to power in 2004. And since the 2004 elections are my window to politics, the other characters of my book are drawn from the leading national figures in that election.”

While Bhau has raised the hackles of some leaders in the sharply divided Left, others see it as a pure and simple paean to Surjeet. Some writers have termed it a “masterpiece”.

In the book, Kirti talks about how he has already seen two men to prime ministership (presumably H D Deve Gowda and V P Singh) and how a “bibi”, who is the top leader of a national party and probably the next prime minister of the country, is coming to meet him. Later, it’s Kirti who tells her to meet the very people who question her Indianness, one of them being Salve from Maharashtra.

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