Sometimes Mamata Banerjee does manage to surprise her supporters and critics alike, perhaps even managing to surprise herself in the process, when she keeps herself in check. A relative check, mind you, for a complete check on Mamata the motormouth is a task impossible even for the gung-ho Mamata herself.

Wednesday, February 27, has been one such day. Banerjee, the chief minister and the leader of people, has been evident till now even as casualty from the fire at Surya Sen market near Sealdah railway station and Calcutta University threatens to surge. Eighteen people have been confirmed dead till now, with some Bangla news channels putting the figure past 20.

But reports from everywhere indicate more tragic haze: doctors treating the injured say many are critical and the toll could rise.

Amid all this, the chief minister has visited the site, ticked off everyone, or nearly everyone but the victims and possibly their kin, as only she can, ordered a probe after assuring, rightly, that all investigation-related work would start once rescue-related work is over, and said that a night shelter would be built for people to stay for the nights since living and cooking in a market full of inflammable goods is dangerous.

"I have seen the building, it is a hazard,” she was quoted by NDTV. “We have to come up with alternatives. The government will be strict about safety norms.”

All going smooth. But then the part-conspiracy theorist and part-crime fiction writer in the CM’s head got sat up and took charge. "Who knows that some people deliberately set the place on fire with an ulterior motive,” Banerjee said.

That was not long after her fire minister Javed Khan got fired up and took inspiration from the old Banerjee line. The building was raised during the “34 years of the Left Front regime”, Khan said. Ergo, he implied, the onus should be passed on to that corner.

That’s classical Mamata Banerjee formula, and her ministers and mastering it with an amazing alacrity: Problem identified, so is solution, hence proved that problem is dealt with.

Having blamed the Left for rapes in the state to deaths of infants ("fake rape charges are being levelled to malign Bengal's good name. Baby deaths too are a planned conspiracy by the Left," she had said, almost to a day last year, and rising violence and lawlessness to Maoist insurgence, and in between having dubbed everyone who thought otherwise a “Maoist” or a sympathiser of the Reds, she is perhaps taking a breather.

In the interim, it’s her ministers who are doing the batting and bowling.

In fact, while the chief minister herself had lashed out at FICCI after the December 2011 fire, which left nearly 100 people dead, public health and engineering minister Subrata Mukherjee, himself a former mayor of Kolkata, had said within days that the tragedy would not have happened had there been no "indifference" on the part of the Left Front government.

What Banerjee and her ministers need to do is take a deep breath and pause, like she did today, after the Sealdah fire. And realise a few points:

# Two years into governance, perhaps the time is past to blame the erstwhile administrators.

# Perhaps the fact that people of West Bengal gave such an overwhelming mandate to the Trinamool Congress is indication that they expect more than history lessons about the source of all problems.

# Perhaps shunting out top police officers just because they are saying or doing things differently is not a good idea — case in point Damayanti Sen’s shunting after she cracked the Park Street rape case early last year and the recent transfer of police chief RK Pachnanda a day after Bengal’s urban development minister Firhad Hakim questioned the police’s case that local Trinamool councillor Mohd Ikbal, considered close to Hakim, was involved in violence leading to a cop’s death.

# Perhaps governance is a slightly different ball game that needs much work in midfield than just firefighting in the defence or scoring goals upfront as strikers.

# Perhaps it’s time to be the true leader who sees the whole picture, instead of snapshots pieced and held together by the day’s top-required realpolitic. The leader that emerges once in a while in Mamata Banerjee — like it did at Sealdah’s Surya Sen market on Wednesday morning: calming, reassuring and in control of the situation.

# Perhaps the whole state wants to be surprised — merrily surprised — more often, with the CM and her colleagues keeping their flying-off-the-handle quotes in check.