When multilingual Sitaram Yechury left Jyoti Basu joking: ’You are a very dangerous person’

Leftist Sitaram Yechury's fluency in different languages had once left former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu in awe. In an article for the Telegraph in 2010, Yechury remembered the time when Basu had called him a "dangerous man".

Yechury wrote that his major travels with Basu were in the late ’80s and early ’90s to the Soviet Union and China "to understand the developments that eventually led to the disintegration of the USSR".

Yechury travelled along with general secretary EMS Namboodiripad, and included Yechuri, M Basavapunnaiah, (Harkishen Singh) Surjeet and Jyoti Basu.

There was a time during one of those trips when Yechury spoke with Surjeet in Hindi, Basu in Bengali, MB in Telugu and EMS in Tamil.

It was during one of those trips to Beijing that during dinner, "Jyotibabu" told him, "Sitaram, you are a very dangerous person. With each of us you speak in a different language. I do not know what tales you carry about us to each other!”

"He had a wry, subtle sense of humour," Yechury recalled.

Sitaram Yechury dies at 72

CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury breathed his last at the AIIMS in Delhi on Thursday following a prolonged illness. He was 72. Yechury had been in a critical condition for the last few days and was on respiratory support.

An affable leader with cross-party political connections, Sitaram Yechury was among the most prominent Left leaders in the country, known as much for his sharp and knowledgeable parliamentary interventions as for the role in giving shape to pragmatic alliances to forge his party's political objectives.

Yechury joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1975 and rose in the party ranks with his skills, knowledge and articulation. He was among the leaders arrested during the Emergency.

Born in Chennai on August 12, 1952, Yechury did his schooling in Hyderabad and later moved to Delhi for higher studies. He studied at St Stephen's College of Delhi University and joined JNU for his post-graduation. A brilliant student, he secured a first class in both his undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in economics.