Strange things happen in public life. A Government which should be lauded goes out of power. A  political party, which should be lauded for its work, is voted out of power. In a way, it is as well! Sheila Dixit should not have come to power, when she did. She should not have gone out of power, when she did! She did innumerable good things. Likewise, CPM should have been enjoying power, when it lost, both in Bengal and in numbers, at the Centre. Mamata has the only credential of being a street politician and she is running the state in a very very bad way. It is Amit Mitra because of whom she has the money to run the West Bengal Government. Amit Mitra, a good able man, has lost his stature because what he said in the last few weeks of election campagn. On the other hand, he was ill-treated in New Delhi when he should not have been. A common man knows who has been the beneficiary of Sharadha scam. But voters of Bengal has overlooked that. Middle class Bengalis were so anti-Jyoti Basu that they never speak of the good work he and CPM did. I hear Congress sympathisers especially, speaking of sidelining of L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sushma Swaraj, et al. and catapaulting of Narendra Bhai Modi! Could anybody have shouldered what Modiji did? Public space is a peculiar phenomenon. Really, strange things happen in public life! People speak and do such incongruous things that a person can not but be aghast.