Sitaram Yechury is one of the gentlest Stalinists I know. In some ways, he represents a different class of communist leaders. Not just because he is both suave and eloquent, but because he has a sense of humour. All this endears him to the elite and India's urban middle class, where private TV news-channels have a larger audience than in rural India.
What he is not is the classical communist, self righteous and easily provoked. When I invited Yechury, a member of the CPM's highest decision-making body, the Politburo, for Lunch with BS, he had only one condition: no five-star hotel.
He would have been happy eating the fiery food at Delhi's Andhra Bhavan or the newly-opened south Indian restaurant, Sarvana Bhavan. But I suggested the Chinese restaurant, Fujiya for unabashedly sentimental reasons
