Excerpt from Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu
Sarojini Chattopadhyaya was born at Hyderabad, on 13th February, 1879. Her father, Dr. Aghoranath Chattopadhyaya, was descended from the ancient Brahmin family of the Chatterjees of Brahmanagaram. He took his degree of Doctor of Science at the University of Edinburgh in 1877, and afterwards had a course of study at Bonn, On his return to India, he founded the Nizam's College at Hyderabad, and till his death laboured in the field of education.
Sarojini, the eldest of his children, was given a very good training by her talented father. The following from her own pen brings out in exquisite prose the characteristics of her father and her deep affection for him. She says:
My ancestors for thousands of years have been lovers of the forests and mountain caves, great dreamers, great scholars, great ascetics. My father is a dreamer himself, a great dreamer, a great man whose life has been a magnificent failure I suppose in the whole of India there are few men whose learning is greater than his, and I don't think there are many men more beloved. He has a great white beard and the profile of Homer and a laugh that brings the roof down. He has wasted all his money on two great objects: to help others and on alchemy. He holds huge courts every day in his garden of all the learned men of all religions-Rajahs and beggars and saints and downright villains, all delightfully mixed up, and all treated as one. And then, his alchemy! Oh dear, night and day the experiments are going on, and every man who brings a new prescription is welcome as a brother! But this alchemy is, you know, only the material counterpart of a poet's craving for Beauty, the eternal Beauty. 'The makers of gold and the makers of verse,' they are twin creators that sway the world's secret desire for mystery; and what in my father is the genius of curiosity-the very essence of all scientific genius-in me is the desire for beauty.
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