Tapas Paul: The silver screen hero who became a villain

"If anyone from the CPM touches my mother, sister, uncle or aunt, Tapas Paul will not spare them. Tapas Paul will take out his revolver, shoot and leave. Know this, know this - Tapas Paul is a product of Chandannagar...I am not a product of Kolkata. I am a product of Chandannagar. Tapas Paul has been a ruffian...If any opponent today touches the body of any Trinamool woman, father or child, I will destroy their entire clan. I will send in my boys. They will rape and leave; they will rape and leave."

- Tapas Paul, Member of Parliament, Krishnanagar, West Bengal

The hero, the honourable MP, has spoken like a villain. Hearing what he was speaking at a public meeting in Choumaha in Nadia district early last month was not easy, a Tapas Paul fan told a newspaper.

But Shatabdi Roy, a former film star herself and an MP, gave an apt explanation for the outburst. "He is an actor and he might have become emotional. But he should have controlled his emotion as an MP," she told a newspaper.

Looking at the video (which is now viral on the internet), one might be deceived into thinking that Paul may actually be repeating a line from one of his films, like this writer once heard Vinod Khanna say, on popular demand, at an election rally in Jharkhand. "Maar diya jaye ki chhod diya jaye?" ("Should we kill or spare him?") (From the film Mera Gaon Mera Desh)

But what Tapas Paul, 55, said was a clear and present threat. All he said could actually come true in edgy Bengal - torn by an unofficial civil war Trinamool Congress and Left Front supporters. The threat, one must not also forget in this rhetoric, came from a threat from the other side - "the provocation" as Paul refers to in his "unconditional apology".

So was he actually playing a goon or was he trying to be a goon?

Most importantly, what is real - the screen image of a chubby Bengali hero who saves the heroine from the ruffians or the real one, a Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP, threatening to send "his boys" to rape women family members of CPM workers?

Those with memories of the '90s will remember films such as Dadar Kriti and Saheb with Tapas as the sugary boy who neither spoke nor did evil.

But something changed when he came out of screen. The man who came out was real and dangerous as he himself admits in the now-infamous video. Was he as dangerous even before he was elected an MP? Scary thought.

In the Lok Sabha elections in May, he bagged 4,38,789 votes. His nearest rival, a CPI-M candidate, got 3,67,534 votes.

How is his voter taking his comment? Does he, or more particularly she, repent electing him?

Meanwhile, Mamata spoke. She was very angry. She was so angry that she too gave a threat: "What will I do, kill him?"

Her remark reminds one of the tragic plot of the classic film Mother India: the boy the mother doted on had become a goon, and her only choice to get rid of the menace was to shoot him.

But in this real-life incident, it would have been better if the chief minister had just let police file a case against her MP.