Stealing time from her busy schedule of preparing Railway Budget and attending party programmes, railway minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has written another book of poems. The slim book simply titled Netai contains poems which are inspired by the killings of nine unarmed villagers, including four women
in the small Netai hamlet near Lalgarh in West Midnapore on January 7. “She (Ms Banerjee) was immensely moved by the cries of children who had lost their parents in the mindless Netai mayhem,” Trinamul Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee said.
The tragedy continued to haunt her for several days after she returned from Netai till she decided to pick up the pen and pour her heart out. There are a total of 31 poems in the book on both Netai massacre in particular and violence in the state in general. Violence is the subject of another book Chalo Jayee (Let’s go) which is in prose.