Fall of 'spoilt genius' called Sajal Chakraborty

Vijay Deo Jha RANCHI Thursday, July 17, 2008

You either love him or hate him, but you can never ignore him.

For a good part of his life, this "spoilt genius" remained at the centre stage during his college days and hogged the limelight after he became an IAS. For those who are guessing to whom we are talking about, this is senior IAS officer Sajal Chakraborty who has been pronounced guilty in the multi-crore fodder scam. The sentence has shocked his friends who see it as another tragic event of the troubled life of Sajal.

Most of his old friends said that Sajal had passion for good food and flamboyant life but he was never possessive about money. "Money never mattered for Sajal I never saw him hankering after money and bank balance. He was good at Economics but he was never economic so he never cared for bank balance", said Subir Biswas, his old friend.

Perhaps Sajal was too naive like any Shakespearean or Dostoveskian character, who was 'essentially very good' but did not know that he was going to be the party of a big time scam. Convicted on the ground of accepting a laptop as bribe, his close friends call it a tragic comedy.

What are the idiosyncrasies of Sajal that makes him different? "Honest yet dishonest knowingly or knowingly, acknowledged yet misunderstood, systematic yet disorganised he remains a mystery through his life", these could be the probable answer if you go on to ask this question to any of his friends.

Either it is his massive girth - all 170 kg or his penchant for flying planes or keeping thoroughbred horses or Sajal in colourful dress - he has been a favourite of news crazy media. When Sajal had arrived to watch the final India-Pakistan One Day wearing his ancestral connection on his sleeve, holding his thinking cap firmly in place, the pet monkey was perched on the IAS officer's right shoulder, no pun intended, people were not surprised.

As the Deputy Commissioner of Chaibasa, Chakravarty started a series of clubs - flying club, horse-riding club, boat club and a rifle club. Such martial hobbies he was himself hooked to is because both his father and brother were in the Army. t was perhaps a bulge out of his suppressed dream to fly high in the sky during his stay in the Indian Air Force which he left on saying "this bhadralok is not meant for the ground duty". Such activities exasperated Lalu to suspend him for the time being only to revoke it a few days later without framing any charges. You can never tell when the man in question is Sajal.

Nevertheless, Sajal would himself poke fun at his massive girth, calling it king size. His unique size was always discussed among the CBI officials for whom he proved to be a slippery customer for quite a long time."How can he hide from us? He is so big, some part of his body would always stick out somewhere," CBI official often quoted this about him. Only the CBI had the difficulty in finding him otherwise lawyers in Patna routinely met him and so did a handful of journalists.

Two broken marriages and a plethora of medical problems could not crush his spirit and agility. His clashes with Lalu during the 1995 Assembly election campaign are his pet topic. He in his peculiar 'Sajalspeak' narrated how and why did he refuse to put a food packet in Lalu's udankhatola during lattes visit to Chaibasa. It was this popular folk that perhaps encouraged the CBI to keep him in good humour and attempted to drag out details about the Chief Minister's involvement in the fodder scam. The fall of this spoilt genius from a glorious height of IAS to a convict leaves several lessons for life - how not to spoil ones' talent and how not to lead a life that the 'king size' Sajal had.