Netaji Subhas Chandra… Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Netaji, I think about your life, the hurdles and hazards of it,
Nay the smooth path,
The zigzagged curves and turns of it,
The crisscrosses of life,
What one thinks and what it happens.

Your disappearance,
The people debate it blindly,
As nobody is there going to believe it,
How did you disappear from,
A much debated, never-ending topic
And never to be believable?

None is there to make one understand the plane-crash,
Te iconic image of his
Dwarfing it all,
The round specs, fair and fine face, full of expression,
White and bulging,
Speaking something,
Showing the path
Which it lies ahead.

This is but one side of the story while on the other the hidden facts
Of your life unknown and unseen
That you had your English-knowing Austrian secretary,
Emily Schenkel as you partner
And never did you come, return back
As for an expecting foreigner wife
And a baby was born to her, named Anita,
Who later on turned out to be Anita Bose Pfaff.

Whether you believe or disbelieve it but Emily had been his wife
Who did not come to India
On seeing the reverence for the lost leader, the forgotten hero,
Which none was to believe or take it in firm belief
As such had been the impact,
The faith of the people
Making them blind in their assertion.

I do not know Netaji, why didn’t you tell, before disappearing
That Emily had been your wife, an expecting mom
And a strange, totally in the dark foreigner wife,
Which but you should have,
You should have, sir?