In Kolkata’s central business district of BBD Bag, a UNESCO-listed heritage zone known for its elegant British-era architecture, stands New Koilaghat building. It is a landmark address, a massive 14-storeyed structure that overlooks Strand Road and the Hooghly. The building houses offices of the Eastern and South Eastern Railways, including one of the biggest railway reservation booking centres in the country. These days, New Koilaghat is getting a fresh coat of paint—a sparkling orange and verdant green combination—at an estimated cost of Rs 30 lakh. It’s a palette that’s hard to miss in a state where the monochrome red colour has dominated life—in politics and outside.

Green and orange are colours of the Trinamool Congress and its chief, Mamata Banerjee, who, by all accounts, is set to dislodge the Left Front government in the West Bengal assembly elections of 2011. In the process, Kolkata, the Left government’s seat of power from where it ruled the state for a record 33 years, is getting a fresh coat of paint. Green, it seems, is slowly becoming the new red here.

Artists, painters, festoon-banner writers and graffiti artists, who have all these years dabbled in red, are now wielding paint brushes that more often than not are dipped in Trinamool colours. This new visual reality is evident in the cityscape: road dividers, factory gates, auto stands, taxi parking lots, public venues and street crossings are increasingly being painted green and orange.

Not surprisingly, the Left is seeing red over the Trinamool’s colour invasion. Md Salim, former CPM MP and now a Central Committee member, says, “The Trinamool Congress is blatantly loud about declaring its presence. A change of guard has little to do with changing colours of buildings and painting the city green and yellow.”

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