One Man and a World at War 193home on Inde pen dence Day, January 26. Sisir had returned to Calcutta
on the evening of January 18 and had accompanied his father to the
wedding of a granddaughter of Subhas’s po lit i cal guru, Deshbandhu
Chitta Ranjan Das. There he had dutifully answered questions about
the poor state of his uncle’s health. The niece and nephews in the know
consumed their uncle’s food, to keep up the pretense that he was still
con fined to his room. Subhas had told Sisir that if they could only hold
out for four or five days, he would have enough time to get away. Since
a court hearing was scheduled for January 27, in connection with one
of the sedition cases, the conspirators in Calcutta decided to report that
they could not find Bose, rather than cede the initiative to the police.
After leaving clear instructions on how Subhas’s disappearance should
be disclosed, Sarat and Sisir left for their garden house in Rishra, out-
side Calcutta. Subhas’s food, consumed by his niece and nephews dur-
ing the previous few days, was now left uneaten; and the cook, upon
discovering this, naturally raised a hue and cry. Two anxious nephews
hurried to Rishra to inform Sarat that Subhas had disappeared. Sisir
drove his father back to the Elgin Road home in Calcutta, to hear fam-
ily members and domestic staff give their version of events and to take
stock of the situation. Subhas’s mother, Prabhabati, was distraught.
Seeing her in distress, Sarat tried to reassure her and moved the head-
quarters of his cover- up operations to Woodburn Park. Sisir was sent
in his Wanderer to search the areas around the Keoratala burning ghat
and the temple at Kalighat. A holy man, who believed Subhas had re-
nounced the world, promised to wake the goddess at night to seek fur-
ther information.^24
The news of Subhas’s disappearance was published in two friendly
newspapers, the Ananda Bazaar Patrika and the Hindusthan Standard,
on the morning of January 27. It was then picked up by Reuters and
transmitted to the world, leaving British intelligence of fi cers embar-
rassed and bewildered.^25 The police arrived in force at the Elgin Road
home and started questioning ev ery one. Sisir observed them as they
looked at all the wrong points of possible exit from the house. One
agent reported that Subhas Chandra Bose had left his home on Janu-
ary 25 for Pondicherry, to join his old friend Dilip Kumar Roy in reli-
gious seclusion.^26 Sarat and Sisir made subtle efforts to propagate the