Mahatma Gandhi Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

May I take the liberty of knowing the White girls accompanying you,
Say, who are the maidens, the belles
Flanking you, Master,
I know them not
As I enquire about
Just as a common man of flesh and bones,
With a desire to probe and question psychologically,
The dark secrets of life,
The stories of human relationships,
Attachment and detachment?

You please say it to me who are the White beauties flanking Gandhi,
Going with him,
With the hands over his shoulders,
Supporting and going
And he striding
With a stick,
The man in khadi robes
With the round specs on the nose.

But their hearts, their relationships, the fact and the fiction of it
The whispers say it,
The world suspects something otherwise
Which but keeps the suspectful and the suspicious guessing,
Why did Madeleine Slade, the daughter of Admiral Sir Edmund Slade,
Mirabehn
Renounced the world
For to be a disciple of yours
At your ashrama?

Gandhi, did you ask her to be, letting her devote her precious life
In your service and devotion,
You got name and fame, were called the Father of The Nation,
But what did she, that English girl
And when we got freedom,
Who went to Vienna to see her?

In loneliness, how had it been the talks, the moments shared with and spent by,
How did a young belle pass her times
And how did you accept her as a disciple
Counselling her to be a shisya, Gandhi?