No More Learning

" It is for this bird-like quality of song, it
seems to me, that they are to be valued. They hint, in a sort of
delicately evasive way, at a rare temperament, the temperament of
a woman of the East, finding expression through a Western
language and under partly Western influences. They do not
express the whole of that temperament; but they express, I think,
its essence; and there is an Eastern magic in them.

Sarojini Chattopadhyay was born at Hyderabad on February 13,
1879. Her father, Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, is descended
from the ancient family of Chattorajes of Bhramangram, who were
noted throughout Eastern Bengal as patrons of Sanskrit learning,
and for their practice of Yoga. He took his degree of Doctor of
Science at the University of Edinburgh in 1877, and afterwards
studied brilliantly at Bonn. On his return to India he founded
the Nizam College at Hyderabad, and has since laboured incessantly,
and at great personal sacrifice, in the cause of education.

Sarojini was the eldest of a large family, all of whom were
taught English at an early age. "I," she writes, "was stubborn
and refused to speak it. So one day when I was nine years old my
father punished me--the only time I was ever punished--by
shutting me in a room alone for a whole day. I came out of it a
full-blown linguist. I have never spoken any other language to
him, or to my mother, who always speaks to me in Hindustani. I
don't think I had any special hankering to write poetry as a
little child, though I was of a very fanciful and dreamy nature.
My training under my father's eye was of a sternly scientific
character.
He was determined that I should be a great mathematician
or a scientist, but the poetic instinct, which I inherited from him
and also from my mother (who wrote some lovely Bengali lyrics in her
youth) proved stronger. One day, when I was eleven, I was sighing
over a sum in algebra: it WOULDN'T come right; but instead a whole
poem came to me suddenly. I wrote it down.

"From that day my 'poetic career' began. At thirteen I wrote a
long poem a la 'Lady of the Lake'--1300 lines in six days. At
thirteen I wrote a drama of 2000 lines, a full-fledged passionate
thing that I began on the spur of the moment without forethought,
just to spite my doctor who said I was very ill and must not
touch a book. My health broke down permanently about this time,
and my regular studies being stopped I read voraciously. I
suppose the greater part of my reading was done between fourteen
and sixteen. I wrote a novel, I wrote fat volumes of journals; I
took myself very seriously in those days. "

Before she was fifteen the great struggle of her life began. Dr.
Govindurajulu Naidu, now her husband, is, though of an old and
honourable family, not a Brahmin. The difference of caste roused
an equal opposition, not only on the side of her family, but of
his; and in 1895 she was sent to England, against her will, with
a special scholarship from the Nizam. She remained in England,
with an interval of travel in Italy, till 1898, studying first at
King's College, London, then, till her health again broke down,
at Girton. She returned to Hyderabad in September 1898, and in
the December of that year, to the scandal of all India, broke
through the bonds of caste, and married Dr. Naidu.