He might have been a kingmaker for many, a pragmatic politician for some and a revolutionary for the CPI(M), but Cuba’s ailing Communist icon Fidel Castro remembers veteran Marxist leader Harkishen Singh Surjeet as India’s “bread man”.

The description is apt as it was Surjeet who took the initiative to send truckloads of wheat — 10,000 tonnes to be precise — to Cuba to help the tiny Communist nation fight the US blockade in the early 90s.

A message by Cuban President Raul Castro received by the CPI(M) here says his brother Fidel remembers Surjeet as the bread man as the wheat sent by him was used to make bread at a time when Cuba was staring at a famine-like situation.

“Surjeet, the person who brought Indian bread for Cuban people,” the message quotes Fidel as saying. The former CPI(M) general secretary had visited Cuba several times and maintained a close relationship with Castro.

Such tales about Surjeet are aplenty and every one of the buffet of leaders and the multitude of people who queued up outside the CPI(M) headquarters here on Sunday to pay their last respects to the Communist veteran had some good memories about him.

India’s political class, irrespective of their party hues turned up in full strength at the AKG Bhavan here, where the mortal remains of the Communist veteran was kept in state to enable people to pay homage.

From Sonia Gandhi to Rajnath Singh and from Mayawati to Mulayam Singh Yadav, all came to pay respects to Surjeet, who engaged everyone of them at one point or the other in his political career. Having stitched many a rainbow coalition, he was undoubtedly the leader of the leaders and a magnet for all the disparate regional parties, many of which were brought to the national level by him.

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