Sarojini Devi: A Bit of Sunlight

It was an evening in early February of a peculiar mild warmth and fragrance, when you

could feel the Northern Indian winter becoming spring.

At a certain junction of the Church Road at Allahabad, there was an incessant congestion of traffic. Motor-cars jammed their brakes and began a snail's speed. Tongas passed ekkas with precious little space between. Bicycles dared narrow unoccupied territory. A huge jostling crowd flocked round the crossing of four ways.

For, hard by, under the glistening dome of "Anand Bhavan" Motilal Nehru lay dying.

It was the occasion for an unofficial convention of all the national leaders from the four corners of India. All the men that mattered in the political arena were there, including the great Gandhi himself.

In the meanwhile, in the drawing-room of Professor Jha in George Town, near by, . . .

Of course, anybody who knows anything about the University of Allahabad knows something of Professor Amaranath Jha. He might not be the soul of the place but he does add some life to an otherwise dull institution. Round his tea-tables one meets interesting people; hears light laughter over excellent jokes; and one gets the finest blends of cigarettes although the Professor himself is no smoker.

Yes, in the meanwhile, in the drawing-room of Prof. Jha in George Town, near by, a small company had gathered. I remember two or three Cashmiri faces, one of which was that of Miss Shyam Kumari Nehru, the Portia of Northern India.

We chatted–the small company of about ten people–about this and that in that vague sort of way people do chat when they are expecting something better to come.

Between great puffs of blue smoke, iwas telling my neighbour of the first time I saw the chief guest of the evening who had not yet arrived–Mrs. Sarojini Naidu.

Leaning in a cosy Chesterfield, my mind gotinto reverse gear and went some twelve years or so. It was in a little sea-coast town–Galle–in the palm-fringed island of Ceylon that I first saw the Nightingale of India.

As the gramophone was voicing forth some weird, haunting melody into the February air, I thought of that morning twelve years ago, when I had to run a good mile to be in time for what seemed to me a memorable morning function. I remembered that the sun was merciless; I perspired profusely. When I arrived at the New Oriental Hotel, the little hall was packed like a third-class passenger's hold-all. Standing in what little space was left between a French padre and a Sinhalese gentleman with an umbrella, I listened with the rapture of a first adoration.

Being very young is being idealistic, romantic and imaginative. And I believe I wished that she might have been a little handsomer! But the power of her words, the way she spoke, her very gestures left me spell-bound.

* * *

It was not till the gramophone had ceased its weird chants and we had begun discussing Motilal Nehru's health that she came sailing into the room with a delicious dignity, clad in a saffron-coloured saree of Swadeshi silk.

‘Anno Domini’ seemed to have pencilled a few lines across her brow since I first saw her. But the eyes were the same. They reminded me of deep pools of forest water.

Speaking her words like nicely cut pieces of silk, in a few minutes she put us all at our ease, taking us into her confidence, in a sort of way.

Certain fragments of her talk come to me with a peculiar insistence as I write. I remember them well because they impressed me then. That is the secret of memory.

"I believe I am the first person in India to have been sorry for my own release," she said, tucking away one foot under her while the other dangled down from the deep chair.

We all shot marks of interrogation at her with our eyes.

She smiled and glanced sideways at Prof. Jha. Mrs. Naidu's glance is like a newspaper headline–brief and impressive and sums up all her feelings.

"You know," she explained, "at the Yervada Jail, I grew some chrysanthemum plants. I tended them with care;I watered them with religious devotion. And when they were just putting forth their buds, I was released. I really felt so miserable. And I asked the Jailor whether I couldn't stay on at least one week more!"

Prof. Jha's drawing-room is lit with beautiful lamps of white stone from Agra that look vaguely dreamy. As the evening deepened into night, the light from those dreamy lamps played with the saffron-coloured saree with elfiish delight.

The turbaned, immaculately clad servants went round with most of those delicious things worth while eating in Northern India; the while Mrs. Naidu talked or made others talk.

As she helped herself to sugar, she said: "I like a lot of sugar in my tea. I suppose it's not fashionable; perhaps it's considered vulgar. But I really cannot help it."

Her voice has the quality of shot silk. Its tone changes with each remark. What effects she gets in conversation by the way she changes the tone of her voice!

She talked about her journey straight from the Poona Jail, through Bombay to Allahabad. At almost every halt, she said, people flocked to the compartment due to the presence of that mystic spinner of India's destiny, Mahatma Gandhi. Pointing her fore-finger in a peculiarly amusing fashion, she imitated men peeping through the carriage window and pointing their rude fingers at Mr. Gandhi and asking, "Is this Mahatmaji?"

She had not minded people crowding so much as she minded the songs they sang. "Those songs might be very patriotic, but from the point of view of music, they were too frightful for words," she declared. Then she imitated some of the songs as if she were a mere slip of a school-girl. It made us roar with laughter.

Suddenly she became serious. And as she munched a tomato-sandwich slowly, she deplored the bad effects of these popular, patriotic songs. What little taste people do have for music gets perverted by these awful songs, she said. To her, they seemed funny. They had jarred on her nerves.

The next moment she was alluringly whimsical. "I can understand little school children on a hartal day indulging in this kind of thing," she went on "but to see fat, podgy, old people with big paunches shouting out their lungs in this fashion is too pitiable. poor dears!"

At the word ‘paunches,’ with her left hand she made a graceful yet huge semi-circle in front of her, indicating to our luxuriant imaginations the rotundity of the commodity mentioned.

Then we talked of a hundred things,–of books, and persons and places and silks and pictures. I remember her confessing that she liked Michael Arlen's Green Hat. Prof. Jha mentioned that Aldous Huxley spoke of Mrs. Naidu in his latest book of Indian travel, Jesting Pilate.

"And what has he to say about me?"–this with a note of nothing more than casual inquisitiveness in her voice of shot silk.

"If only all Indian politicians were like you it would be a happier day for India, he says," replied the Professor.

"I don't know," she said, shrugging her shoulders in the manner of Maurice Chevalier, "why people insist on calling me a politician when I never pretend to be one. It is really an irony of fate and a great joke." Then she recounted how she met Huxley.

And so on and on and on.

As I sat watching this most celebrated of Indian women sipping her much sugared tea, I thought she was like a bit of sunlight forgotten behind by the sun. She was all life and gaiety and good cheer.

It was growing late. Each person in the little company several limes tried to make a move homewards; but the impulse ended up in lighting another cigarette and turning to Mrs. Naidu with greater eagerness. That vague feeling of shame at having wearied a great person and made her talk overmuch to our pleasure descended over us. But it made it all the harder to suggest leaving.

But there never was any hint of weariness in those lustrous eyes shining like dark jewels. She told us that she had a dinner engagement that night. "But don't you worry" she put in, "there's plenty of time. Besides I am not going to change. The fact of the matter is, I haven't got anything to change into!"

She laughed. And covering her words with the silver paper of light laughter, she spoke of ‘the jolly good muddle she had got into.’ In the great hurry, she had no time to pack at Bombay. So she had instructed that two of her trunks that had come from Poona should be sent to her. What did she find on opening one of them at Allahabad? Among other things a spirit-stove, a tumbler, some cups and a tea-strainer!

"A tea-strainer!" she exclaimed, "God only knows how it got in there! Now, I ask you, can I go about dressed up in a tea-strainer.

I came away that evening with a sense of relief that some politicians at least have a sense of humour. But then, Mrs. Naidu is not a politician. She is a woman and a poet.

Whatever she speaks of, behind the words there is a sense of colour. Her words always made me, though I know not why, think of deep hues of purple and crimson and perfumes heavily delectable.

I wonder how she ever came to be called a politician. It is a freakish political irony of fate that makes saints into ‘dictators’ and poets into stump orators.

Mrs. Sarojini Naidu's personality is a combination of quick-silver and tempered steel. Perhaps the tempered steel has conquered the quick-silver. That is why she will ever be considered a politician however much she may dislike it.