MUMBAI, June 4 -- His fiery soliloquies may have brought Mumbai to a standstill innumerable times, but the public stirs also kindled hope among countless municipal sweepers and peons, teachers and taxi-BEST drivers, chefs, clerks and cooks, nurses and gumastas across Mumbai. The Mumbai-George Fernandes amour is one of the city's endearing folklore which refuse to stale with time. That the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) should, for once, rise above pandemonium and arcane points of order, and unanimously decide to tip its hat to Fernandes by agreeing to name a busy public square, near the iconic civic headquarters in south Mumbai, after him is a gesture which merits encore, say civic chroniclers. Fernandes was elected to the BMC way back in the 1960s, marking his debut in city politics. "Fernandes belonged to an era when Mumbai held the working class in the hollow of its palm. We need more leaders like him," said publisher-writer Arun Naik, one of Fernandes's close friends, at a function hosted by a clutch of unions floated by Fernandes, on Wednesday, near the BMC headquarters. Fernandes symbolised Mumbai's inclusive character and its spunk, said musician-critic Amarendra Nandu Dhaneshwar, a close colleague. "Mumbai shaped George and he, in turn, re-wrote Mumbai's destiny, striking a fine balance between lucre and labour. He imbibed all that was good in Mumbai: hard work, integrity, pluralism and a strong survival instinct." The Fernandes mythology is replete with cute stories. For instance, a school drop-out, Fernandes was dismissed from a Mangalore Christian seminary for his blasphemous pieces; after coming to Mumbai the young migrant worked briefly as proof reader in a city English newspaper; he also served as salesman at the iconic Furtado's music shop at Dhobi Talao, often strumming a guitar when the proprietor was away; slept at night on the lawns of Horniman Circle; how the legendary J R D Tata, while sharing a seat with Fernandes on an Air India flight to New Delhi during the Janata regime, asked him, poker faced, if a trade unionist could make a good industries minister. It was P D'Mello, a Manglorean, who took a 20-somethig Fernandes under his wings and initiated him into the chaotic, hard-as-nail world of trade unionism. D'Mello was the unquestioned doyen of the Mumbai dock employees. "While Fernandes was quick to master the tricks of the trade, his genius lay in the fact that while his predecessors such as Comrade S A Dange and G D Ambekar remained confined to mill workers, Fernandes cast his net wide and began to consolidate workers from the till then unorganised sectors such as public transport, railways, municipal-BEST employees and hotel-restaurant workers, to name a few," said Naik. Fernandes welded a team of loyal lieutenants, including Narayan Tawde, Ranjit Bhanu, Freddie D'Sa, Sharad Rao, D L Quadros and Mahabal Shetty, among others. Accessible and affable, he was open for dialogue over a hot cuppa (he was a teetotaller). Soon, the Municipal Mazdoor Union became the flagship of the city's robust trade union movement. Subsequently, Fernandes brought a host of trade bodies under the aegis of the Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat into which he, said Dhaneshwar, "put his heart and soul." A tough negotiator, Fernandes would go through the BMC's and BEST's balance sheets with a fine-tooth comb before sitting for talks with the IAS officials. In no time his sparsely furnished office near Portuguese church, Girgaon (popularly known as 204, Charni Road) became the nerve centre of union networking, training and dissemination of information. Always on the move, Fernandes, dressed in crumpled pyjama-kurta, cared little for personal comfort, added Dhaneshwar. He lived for years in a tiny two-room apartment at Gowalia Tank, and ate anywhere he liked -the modest Bharatiya Lunch Home at Thakurdwar, in Girgaon, or Flora, the highbrow Chinese restaurant at Worli. Defeating S K Patil, the Congress veteran and the party's fund-raiser, in the 1967 Lok Sabha election from Mumbai South was Fernandes's hour of glory. The poll victory earned him the soubriquet of Giant Killer, anointing him as Mumbai's cult figure. The trade union leader's well etched character in 'Mumbai Dinank', writer Arun Sadhu's landmark Marathi novel on the political shenanigans in the 1970s, bears close resemblance to Fernandes. However, Fernandes lost his grip over Mumbai after he shifted his political base to Bihar, handing over the keys of the city to his dear friend, Bal - the pipe-smoking cartoonist-turned-politician Balasaheb Thackeray. The 1977 Janata Party victory and its downfall; the subsequent splits in the party and the Janata Dal, the tumult and turmoil of coalition politics and Fernandes's decision to join the BJP-led NDA left many of his supporters bristling. "But, Fernandes was not the only one to tie-up with the BJP. Others too have done so. Anti-Congressism prompted him to team up with the BJP. But don't forget that as defence minister in the Vajpayee government it was Fernandes who had despatched the army to Gujarat following the Godhra incident. Had he been around today Fernandes would have been a bitter critic of PM Modi," said Naik. Once a George Fernandes always a George Fernandes....