The good citizens of the most fractious state capital in the country are scratching their bhödrolok heads over a particular Trinamool Congress banner that seems to have cropped up overnight everywhere. The threatening image on the banner looks like it means business, commercio della mafia; or it could be a dramatic logo for the battle plan stationery of two opposing armies—which, Kolkata suddenly realises, it most likely is; so what if the image pays homage to one party, not both: there’s enough of the sentiment to go around.

At first — and second and third — sight, the banner seems to have been so obviously designed by the long-haired, coked-out art department of some spiffy advertising agency that had been given a three-word mandate by the always histrionic Mamata Banerjee: “Lal bondook bhango (Break the red gun).” Familiar with her indecipherable paintings—which loads of West Bengal’s corporate houses have been falling over one another to snap up for lakhs, not because they think that the paintings’ worth might appreciate over the years but because they think that Banerjee’s might — they took her words literally.

So, the image they put on the banner is that of a handgun, but one that has been twisted to an inch of its life. Placed between the two halves of the Trinamool war cry—“Bödla nöe, bödol chaī (We want change, not revenge)”—is the painted image of a generic revolver, with a blood red butt, hammer, cylinder and trigger— but a green barrel that has had its neck wrung by a simple, daily-use overhand knot into a pretzel. The business end of the downward-pointing gun now has a joke barrel that faces upward at a 45˚ angle — away from the coy Trinamool Congress logo, a triple-leaf, three-colour spiderwort struggling gamely up from the mati of West Bengal against all odds.

Or it seems to be struggling. For all anybody knows, the Trinamool spiderwort has the metal-bending capabilities of Uri Geller and the banner is just heralding Global Disarmament, starting with West Bengal. Somehow, though, not many think the banner is about giving peace a chance. Even the po-faced Election Commission showed a sense of humour when it gave the Trinamool, a party scarcely less combative than the West Bengal CPI (M), a logo that suits it as much as a Victorian paisley pattern suits Kevlar body armour.

Irony this unsubtle makes the Böngobäbu sweat: the CPI (M) has never cultivated subtlety; the banner needs deconstructing. Here’s the problem the good burghers of Kolkata have to resolve before they can get down to marking their votes: The Symbolism of the Gun, which for the rest of the world really hasn’t been much of a symbol for anything, other than straightforward bloodshed, since Comrade Che died.

1) Is that a Red gun that the green Trinamool is trying to violently wrench from the Left Front lumpenproletariat (who are now, as everyone knows, the Trinamool lumpenproletariat, so the wrenching is really an exercise in the Trinamool disarming itself), and in the process mutilating one of the noblest instruments of Indian votery? 2) Has the Election Commission really granted a licence to the Left Front and/or the Trinamool to use a gun as a symbol, if not of the party at least of intent? Why, when, where, who, how, and not least of all—“What?!” 3) Is it a red gun that has, through the simple means of being a Red gun, tied the Trinamool in a green Gordian knot that it will have to shoot its way out of? 4) Is it a red Red gun in the process of turning into a green Trinamool gun or a green gun turning into a red gun, thus defeating the very purpose of the aforementioned wrenching? 5) If the Trinamool stands for anti-Red, why couldn’t it have taken a leaf from the 1960s-70s anti-Vietnam War protesters and shown its three-leafed flower symbol stuck into the barrel of a gun? 6) Is the circumstantial evidence that corporate advertising people were involved—“What circumstantial evidence? We paid them, it’s all aboveboard!”—in creating such a violent image an indication that the Trinamool will eventually hew to corporate anarchism?—“What corporate anarchism? Corporatist anarchosyndicalism!! What do you mean there is nothing known as corporatist anarchosyndicalism? Now there is!! Cholbe na, cholbe na!!!” 7) Will the Left Front now retaliate with a banner of a green gun being tied into a red pretzel? 8) When? After the elections? 9) Will they show a revolver that looks like it was crafted in a tin shed in Munger? Or a Chinese-made AK-56, which is the Maoist—perhaps Trinamool?—weapon of choice?—“Trinamool weapon of choice? I can assure you with 100 per cent Sonia Gandhi support that the Left Front has stolen 10 Bofors guns and smuggled them to the Harmad Bahini in Midnapore!! 100 per cent!” 10) Where can we get hold of a gun like the one on the banner?—“What do you need a gun for, you rascal paanwallah!!”

Last heard of, the Mamata Banerjee cheerleader and painter Suvaprasanna was painting, at his super-swank Salt Lake house, a three-storey-tall canvas—which looks exactly like the banner in question, only much bigger. He said he wanted to sell it to fund a museum of the “Nandigram armed struggle”. Maverick Trinamool poet-singer Kabir Suman is planning to burn an album called ‘Lal bonduk-er shobuj gölpo (The green story of the red gun)’. CPI (M) strongman Biman Bose, meanwhile, is reported to be going blue in the face every minute or so.

At New Market, Esplanade, Gariahat and Burrabazar, clothes stalls are selling the iconic Che T-shirts based on Albert Korda’s 1960 photograph, Guerrillero Heroico, with a green instead of the usual red background. No one knows what to make of this stunning reversal of time-honoured idolatry.