Something rather interesting occurred on Monday, April 15 — the new year as per Bengali calendar (though the only calendars I have ever seen printed in Bengali are those by sweet shops; the ones with glassy, touched-up illustrations of different gods and goddesses). In perhaps a first, Mamata Banerjee, the irrepressible chief minister of West Bengal, said something close to what sounds suspiciously close to a phrase called admission of guilt.

In a meeting with Derek O’Brien, the Trinamool Congress MP and Banerjee’s Man Friday on all days of the week when she wants to interact with the media, of social and all other modes, the CM apparently admitted that she had made some mistakes in the year gone by. Okay, make that nearly two years.

“In the last two years, there have been hundreds of examples of development in Bengal. We also may have made two or three mistakes. But we will learn from our mistakes in the new year,” O’Brien told the media after meeting Banerjee at her residence on the Bengali new year’s day, the PTI reports.

Two or three in two years? That’s way better a strike rate than perhaps even Mahatma Gandhi at his prime.

I am not curious about the mistakes she made — I can count two of them: the fact that she had to admit some mistakes, and, second, the fact that she had to count it and tell it to O’Brien for him to tell it to the world. I am interested in knowing what prompted her to count the mistakes. Aye, even at the risk of being dubbed a Maoist and CPM sympathiser with a knack to bring down the “maa-maati-maanush gorment” with mathematical jabs at guilt quotients.

Is it that Banerjee is ageing, and needs to confide in people about slip-ups? Or has she been so deeply moved by last week’s heckling she received in New Delhi that she needs to start a political debate on owning up?

Did she read Chetan Bhagat’s 3 Mistakes of My Life during her stay at Belle Vue hospital for the major part of the past week following the ruckus? Having complained of palpitation and breathing problems, among other aftershocks of the Delhi episode, did her condition get worse and she began mulling over her mistakes? While she had complained of “severe pain in the shoulder joints, neck and knees”, was there an injury to the head that they all missed?

Was she delusional while setting forth on her Mission Guilt Admission journey?

Is it the beginning of Banerjee’s journey to sainthood? Or is this the beginning of the end of the mercurial Mamata everyone either loves, or hates, or loves to hate or hates to love?

These are questions that need to be asked (and asked forthwith), answered (and answered with precision) and cross-checked before we get down to the crucial question: will Mamata call Mamata a Maoist for daring to admit that Mamata made mistakes?

As for the rest, start counting your mistakes and add one for free to that list: reading this column.

Happy new year. Now where’s that sondesh I was promised?