West Bengal is asking, whose Didi is she?

The jokes about Mamata Banerjee's win are flooding my social media timeline.

"Are Bengal's people masochistic?" a friend asks, all the way from Switzerland. "Or just very forgiving?" I retort. "The only good thing about Mamata winning is that set ke jokes nahin badalne honge," posts stand-up comic Saurav Goyal. "Are people really this blind?" messages a cousin from Bangalore.

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If 33 years of Left rule proves anything, it's that Bengal is kind to the incumbent, we discuss with colleagues. Is it kindness or inertia? Is it that famous Bengali attitude we are accused of, "cholchay cholbay", or what's happening will continue, and why bother with anything at all? Or is it the lack of a believable viable face, the Left-Congress alliance notwithstanding.

I must have been about six when one of grandfather's friends asked me what now seems like a terribly difficult question for a child. "Which part of your name do you take after? Are you Malini like Malini Bhattacharjee (CPM) or Banerjee like Mamata Banerjee?"

I think it was the first time I heard of Bengal's Didi.

I, of course, later heard more about her. And a lot of it came from our cook who used to live next to the railway lines, under Dhakuria Bridge. An area that Didi crossed during her rally and saw massive crowds come out in support. Didi was their saviour. Maybe even a messiah of sorts.

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In her press conference, where she thanked India Today for predicting her win, she mentioned this thing that explains her popularity. "I am not a VIP. I'm an LIP, a less important person. I want to live like a commoner," she said.

That's the answer, really.

For the grassroots majority, Didi is theirs.