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Subash
Chandra Bose and Vienna
By Mehru jaffer
It
was so nice to run into Hella the other day. We met quite by accident
inside the cozy warmth of one of Vienna's numerous red and white
street cars that loop around the city from dawn to dusk their flags
flapping away merrily in front even when the wind blowing is from
Siberia. And ignoring all the freezing rain, pouring down upon snow
clad pavements outside, we talked without brake.
I told her how thrilling it was to listen to her speak as a guest of
the Austro-Indian Association the other day where she was asked to
relive her life with Balakrisna Sarma in the thick and thin of the
last World War. This is the time when Indian freedom fighters like
Subash Chandra Bose were in and out of Austria meeting with Europeans
and other Indians alike to further their cause. Sarma came to Vienna
in the 1930s to study chemistry and was secretary of the Indian
Students Association here. In the chaos of the start of the war Sarma
somehow missed the last train out of Austria and could not return to
India. When an Austrian family invited him to stay with them he
readily accepted, having also fallen in love in the meanwhile with the
daughter of the house. This daughter was Michaela, or Hella as most
people know her today. Hella went with Sarma to Berlin after he won a
scholarship for further studies in Germany.
Sarma and Bose also met. Bose set up the Free India Centre in Berlin
and formed the Indian Legion while Sarma was given charge of the Azad
Hind Radio used by Bose to air his views to listeners back home. Bose
stayed in various parts of Europe during the decade between 1933 and
1942 but made Vienna his home. While in Europe he met Hitler and
Mussolini in an attempt to seek help from anyone to get the British
out of India.
Now that we were talking about Bose I wondered if Hella had heard
about the film that Shyam Benegal wants to make about Bose? I told her
how fans had forbidden Benegal to include the marriage of Bose to
Emilie Schenkl in the film and the birth of their daughter Anita.
Hella simply sighed, for she had heard it all before. Then she repeated what
is already common knowledge that Schenkl also known as Mimi had met
Bose in Vienna. Bose was in exile and ill with tuberculosis and Mimi
had looked after him. She was his interpreter and had typed the
manuscript of Bose's 1934 account of nationalism in the book The
Indian Struggle.
I remembered talking to Mimi myself just before she died in the
mid-1990s whether the fuss made over her marriage to Bose ever
bothered her? Mimi said that it did not but wished that people would
try and understand Bose as a human being and not only as a god. For
her Bose was first and foremost a human being, a most extraordinary
one, but nevertheless a human being. Mimitold me that she did not
believe that Bose ever went into hiding. If he was alive, she was sure
that he would have come to her. Mimi never visited India but kept an
open house for all the relatives and friends of Bose who wanted to see
her here. She felt most uncomfortable with those admirers of her
husband who would often crowd in front of her Vienna home and stay
there for hours. If they saw her they always wanted to touch her feet,
and kiss her.
I met Anita in 1996 when she drove down from Germany where she now
lives, with the ashes of her mother, for a burial ceremony in Vienna.
At that close, and very dignified family gathering there had seemed no
reason for anyone present to pretend to be what they might not have
been. Once the streetcar stopped near her house Hella hopped out
waving a hearty good bye but she also suggested that I talk to Anita
about this latest controversy over Benegal's film about her father. I
said that I would.
But
back home as I picked up the telephone to dial Anita's number a shiver
crawled up the spine. I am not sure if the temperature touching minus
this and that was entirely to blame for all the goose pimples for a
thought also crossed my mind. I wondered how I would feel if people
repeatedly asked me to prove my parentage?
-----Mehru
Jaffer
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