As a kid Sarojini had been a very imaginative, sentimental and day dreaming girl.
Her father wanted her to become a doctor or a mathematician or scientist. But events shaped her into a poetess. There was a poetess inside her all the time which made her a day dreamer. But her stint in England was the watershed of her life. There the poet showed itself and luckily found a right nursery to mature up under the care of the right gardeners like Goss and Simons.
Once Sarojini revealed—‘I think in the childhood I had little interest in poem writing although my mind was very imaginative and dreamy. In the guidance of the father I had been put through the education drill with scientific harshness. He was determined to pour me into a mould of a scientist or a mathematician. But the father’s academic background and mother’s softness towards literature that I inherited prevailed and egged me on towards the poetry.
When I was an eleven year old, one day I was grappling with algebra problem when the idea of a poem popped up in my mind. I wrote it down. And that was the beginning of my poetry innings.
At the age of 13 I wrote a long poem captioned, ‘Lady and the Lake”—thirteen hundred lines in six days. In the same year I wrote a drama in 2000 lines. It was just an emotional explosion on paper. There was little pondering behind it.
It was truly retaliation to a doctor’s diktat that pronounced me sick and prescribed total refrain from reading and writing.
Meanwhile the retaliatory act told upon my health. It aggravated my condition so much that I was unable to carry on my normal reading even.
I paid heavy price for my petulance.
When I recovered my health a bit I had to put in a lot of self study to make up for the loss. I think I did most of my writing between the ages of fourteen and sixteen besides reading the books of others. I even wrote a novel and worded fat volumes of the diaries. I was dead serious then.’
Some of the poems written by Sarojini in her childhood were published in newspapers and magazines.
Those poems are kept in Calcutta (Kolkata) National Library’s archives. One of the poems is titled ‘Traveller’s Song’ written when she was only 13 years old. Another poem is also there written by her on her 14th birthday beside some more of them.
In 1905 Sarojini’s first major collection of poems titled ‘The Golden Threshold’ was published which became one of the best selling books of that time in England. All the leading newspaper and literary critics praised the collection in glowing terms.
In 1912 her second of book of poems ‘The Bird of Time’ was publish by William H.
The third book called ‘The Broken Wing’ was printed five years later in 1917. Both the books created waves and she became a familiar name in the world of literature.
Her poems reflected her inner sublime spirit that lifed the human sensibilities to new heights.
‘Ode to India’ poem is an example:
‘Arise! O mother, arise!
Come alive, arise again,
Rid of the idleness.
And like woman seeded by far off stars
give birth to new glory from your immortal womb,
Your future gives you a call,
In anxiety laden voice,
In a voice attuned to destiny.
Towards the gracefully expanding victory,
Glorious like the moon.
Arise! O dormant mother, arise!
And accept the crown.
You! The sovereign empress of once upon a time.
In the forward to Sarojini’s new collection ‘Scriptured Flute’ Joseph Alexander writes—‘This woman is considered to the best poetic talent of India today. It might sound paradoxical but she is an emotional philosopher. From the beginning to the end she is a songster, a crooner of the songs of the heart. Like Keats she has suffered ill health most of her life. It reflects in the complex structuring of her songs in the form of a unique force remitted by pain. Her songs give off heat like burning cinder.
They have energy.
She sings like a bird. Her voice sounds like an echo from the deep cavern of desire. But her songs are not mortal like that of a bird. Like truth they are forever. She does not write just for the sake of writing. Her literature is not artificial in anyway. Her songs reflect her heart’.
In the beginning of her social role she concentrated on the injustices and tyranny let loose on the women by old traditions and customs. She worked hard for the emancipation of the Indian women.
Later on she turned the corner to enter active politics where the battle was raging on a wider canvas allowing the women’s upliftment to be a part of it.
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