As soon as Sarojini stepped into her teens in 1894 the budding poetess in her showed up.
She wrote a poem titled ‘Love’. It revealed her youthful zeal for life. A dreamy teenager was declaring her commitment and paying tributes to true spontaneous natural love.
This love and commitment remained ever her guiding principles of life.
Her first poem was to the following effect—
‘I love you with the affection
unchangeable in the form;
Like the stars of the night.
My love is far more powerful than death,
My love is pure like the dawn light.
I am not curious to know,
If you love me or not.
Enough for me is
your beings the best, the dearest and the greatest;
I surrender to you all the treasures of my heart.’
Some time later Sarojini wrote a small Parsi play called ‘Mehar Munir’.
Her father liked the play very much. He got it published in a local magazine.
Dr. Aghornath distributed the printed English version of the same play among his friends and aquaintances.
Nizam Hyderabad also happened to read a copy of the play. So impressed was he that he asked Aghornath to ask his daughter what she would like to have a gift from the Nizam on her wedding.
What further happened in this regard is not clear or was never explained. But Nizam did grant Sarojini a scholarship in 1895. She could go to London for her studies. Scholarship covered her travel expenses and
£ 300 a year stipend which at that time was a generous amount.
Father Aghornath and teenager Sarojini were delighted. An excited 16 year old girl, Sarojini reached England without losing any time.
There she learnt that she was underage to be admitted into Cambridge University. So, she joined the King’s College of London. Young Sarojini was in the care of Miss Manning, a fellow student. In her company Sarojini met Britain’s great literary scholars and poets. It was a great chance for her to grow literary wise.
The interaction with the famous literary critic
Mr. Edmond Goss inspired her into poetry. She wrote poems and her first collection of poems was ready for the printing titled, ‘The Golden Threshold’.
The famed literary critic of English Mr. Arthur Simon wrote the forward of the book in the following words—‘Those who happened to know Sarojini in England understood well that this small girl’s entire life was focussed in her eyes. Those eyes turned to beauty as the sunflower turns in the sun’s direction. Then the eyes so creatively opened that there were eyes and eyes all around.
She was found wrapped in a saree always. She is short in height. Her loose black hair hung down on her back like a black velvet curtain. It sometimes gave an impression of her being a kid. She spoke little but whenever she spoke it sounded like a sweet music at low volume. She looked lovely and presentable wherever she happened to be.’
At another paragraph he wrote—‘There was something in her that can not be put down as personal. I would call it ‘sublime consciousness’ or it was some spiritual force. I have felt it. It amazed me and I admired it. It was something far more ancient wisdom than Christian consciousness. A seasoned wisdom that torched to ashes the narrow-mindedness, pusscilinamy, instability and such temporary mindsets. I could feel the smoke of the fire billowing up…
Her body was never free of pain and heart never unagitative but her physical frailty and violent heart could not disturb her concentration of thoughts which was like the imperturbability of Lord Buddha in meditation.’
After two years of study in Kings College Sarojini took admission in ‘Gurton College’.
It was in this college that she met poetic Edmond Goss. The meeting was inspired and arranged by Miss Menning. Menning had seen the poems Sarojini had written. She thought that the poems were exceptionally deep in the poetic sentiment.
Miss Menning pressed Sarojini to show her poems to Edmond Goss who was a famous critic of that period. Sarojini gave him her poems a bit unwillingly. Menning assured her that Goss would give them the true evaluation of her verses.
After going through the poems the critic opined—‘Sarojini has the creative craft, impeccable grammar and noble sentiments. But the poems are completely bereft of individuality or personal touch.
They are western in respect of sentiment and reflections. Perhaps, based on the echoes of the writings of Tennyson and Shelley. I can’t say with authority but I feel that the poems do carry the atmosphere of Christian escapism.’
Another critic to influence and encourage Sarojini was Arthur Simons who understood her character after testing her thoroughly. But it was Goss who analysed her work in frank professional way and provided the guidelines to put life in her poems.
Sarojini respected both the erudite and accomplished literary critics. She made their critical analysis of her poems as constructive guidelines for her future poetic expressions.
It led to her easily bringing out her natural poetic sentiments talentfully in her works. Her poems now became creations that carried her sentiments in an original way. She had really realised the natural poet within herself.
In 1897, Sarojini wrote to Goss—
‘Whatever you told me on Sunday I can’t summon enough courage to thank you for that. You can’t imagine how those words of yours are significant to me. The people fill my life with uncharitable colours. In the resultant self pity and frustration I live in, how your frank words fill me with hope and courage, you can’t fathom.
The poem is what I fully, intensely and intimately love because I am a poetess. The poetess I am. I always chant these words mentally to be able to prove that I am really one. Would you allow me to reveal something about myself? I want to tell you how you influenced my life when I was only an eleven year old kid girl.
I have been brought up in beautiful, dreamy and abnormal circumstances. But in those circumstances there was noting to practically inspire towards literary direction. The fact is that we were under strong influence of technical subjects like science and mathematics. I always loved poems but little did I know that I could create my own poems. But I wrote nevertheless as an idle exercise. I never told anyone about my adolescent private venture.
I wrote on.
The imaginations came to my mind fast and naturally notwithstanding the fact that they were amateurish and weak. I don’t have any proof left on the basis of which I can tell their tale.
Somehow they fell in the hands of my father and everyone knew about my attempt. The family was mightily impressed and it had led me to believe being as the one with divine talent. Anything I did was looked upon as extraordinary and divine.
In those days I was loaded with irrational accolades for no reason. May be, it was all due to the family’s protective love for me. The praise seeded ego in me and it was threatening to balloon when somehow the magic of the name Edmond Goss intervened.
It affected me.
In that age magical myths used to be more true than the stark realities. In my mind a vague belief or consciousness began to take root that this magical name ‘Edmond Goss’ will be a powerful and essential influence on my creative life.
I went on writing. Hyderabad went mad and still madder over my creations. I think infact that entire country was readying to thrust a great recognition on me. But as I was more and more praised I got increasingly bored with myself in the same proportion.
An irresistible desire seized me to have my poems correctly evaluated. I knew that my poems were very weak and shallow. But I wanted to know if there was any scope to improve upon my writings to create better and poetically meaningful verses.
At least in utter frustration I wrote a letter to you. I think it must have been an awful letter. Then, I was only 14 years old or fifteen. But the next day I burnt that letter. After that I fell ill.
It was a long and crippling malady, I almost died. For a period it partially paralysed my mental faculties.
It looked to me that there was nothing left in my life except the love for literature and a wish to write better poems.
Then, I landed in England at the age of sixteen. Because of the young age I consider myself quite immature having little knowledge. The England of my dreams is Shelley and Keats. They are dead. And Edmond Goss is alive and is a big chunk of my Dream England. The rest is merely Westminster Abbey and Thames.
In such a situation, I thought that I must meet Edmond Goss. For the first six months I could write nothing or do anything. Then, suddenly a creative urge stormed my mind and I began to write…write…and write more.
I think I must have written some forty five poems in three months The lot I sent to you consisted of selected poems from my creative explosion of weak verses.
Then, I met you in the month of January and my imagination took solid shape in you.
I was not disappointed. Infact I will never forget that day when suddenly in my new great life my conscience manifested I had always wished for and for which I had wasted such a long time.
From that day on I began to feel that I had indeed changed. I no more was amateurishly awkward. I had put on a new attires of fresh, beautiful hope and ambition. I grew up mentally and kept growing. Now I can feel it. I can see more clearly now and think more deeply. I am loving the beautiful soul of the art more intensely and selflessly. It is now more dear to me than flesh and blood.
I am grateful to you for that.
I know that I have not been able to express my sentiments in orderly and comprehensive manner. But I hope you will understand me and won’t dismiss off my expression.
I pray that the way you influenced my life for such a long time you will continue it in future as well. Whatever I write I will send it to you for your critical view which will be very precious for me.
I wish you to become more and more critical as my writings improve because I am not in the creative literary field for only a few years. As a creative writer, I want to stay alive for centuries. It may be my idle pride but if summits are not surmountable can’t one look up to the skies and wish for the stars?
I won’t apologize to you for taking up so much of your time because I have thousand reasons to be grateful to you without letting you know about it. I can’t be grateful to you silently, Please keep faith in me.’
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