Sarojini Naidu Quotes

To quench my longing I bent me low By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow In that magical wood in the land of sleep.

She is twin-born with primal mysteries, and drinks of life at Time's forgotten source.

We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.

Cover mine eyes, O my Love! Mine eyes that are weary of bliss As of light that is poignant and strong O silence my lips with a kiss, My lips that are weary of song! Shelter my soul, O my love! My soul is bent low with the pain And the burden of love, like the grace Of a flower that is smitten with rain: O shelter my soul from thy face!

Life is a song - sing it. Life is a game - play it. Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a dream - realise it. Life is a sacrifice - offer it. Life is love - enjoy it.

The Bird of Time O Bird of Time on your fruitful bough What are the songs you sing? ... Songs of the glory and gladness of life, Of poignant sorrow and passionate strife, And the lilting joy of the spring; Of hope that sows for the years unborn, And faith that dreams of a tarrying morn, The fragrant peace of the twilight's breath, And the mystic silence that men call death. O Bird of Time, say where did you learn The changing measures you sing? ... In blowing forests and breaking tides, In the happy laughter of new-made brides, And the nests of the new-born spring; In the dawn that thrills to a mother's prayer, And the night that shelters a heart's despair, In the sigh of pity, the sob of hate, And the pride of a soul that has conquered fate.

Sarojini Naidu, India’s great poetess and a redoubtable freedom fighter, told. Once she signed an autograph for a young boy and when she asked him if he knew who she was, he said, ‘You are C. K. Nayudu’s wife!

Till ye have battled with great grief and fears/And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years/Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife/Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.

Ruttie’s suicide would be hidden for many years and only those in the Jinnahs’ inner circle were told the truth. Yet as Sarojini Naidu wrote to her daughter Padmaja: Poor little Ruttie had taken an overdraught of veronal … But, darling you realize of course that this is not the official version … Poor mad little suffering child. Maybe [now] she’ll find the peace that she was denied – or denied herself on earth. Jinnah’s friend Dwarkadas sat next to him at Ruttie’s funeral, and he later described the scene. Never have I found a man so sad and bitter. He screamed his heart out … Something I saw had snapped in him. The death of his wife was not just a sad event, nor just something to be grieved over, but he took it, this act of God, as a failure and a personal defeat in his life.75 With Ruttie gone, Jinnah found solace in his still-nameless daughter, who soon took the name Dina. As a single father, he made her his primary project, moving to London and enrolling her at a new school in Sussex. By the time he returned to India, he would be a changed man. By early 1929, with Jinnah living in Europe, Gandhi once again assumed supreme leadership of Indian politics. Looking to find a way to unite everyone, Hindu or Muslim, Bengali or Burmese, behind a single cause, he announced his intention to stage a national protest against the British Salt Act which gave the British government a monopoly on the manufacture and distribution of Indian salt.

Outside of Congress, however, Jinnah’s political career began to decline and his relationship with Ruttie deteriorated. Depressed and alone, Ruttie sought solace in Bombay’s jazz clubs while Jinnah focused on building a political base in the Muslim League – a rival political party to the Congress. But his growing emphasis on his Muslim identity only alienated Ruttie more, and one day, when she drove to meet him at the town hall, he screamed at her for packing ham sandwiches. ‘What have you done!’ he exclaimed. ‘If my voters were to learn that I am going to eat ham sandwiches for lunch, do you think I have a ghost of a chance of being elected?’29 Ruttie distanced herself from her husband after that, and instead started experimenting with drugs and spirit communication, leading friends to worry about the number of morphine needles she left scattered around her room. With their marriage falling apart, both Jinnah and Ruttie neglected their newborn daughter, who would remain nameless for almost six years. The ‘little baby is one of the most pathetic, heart-breaking things I have ever seen,’ wrote Sarojini’s daughter Padmaja Naidu to her sister in 1921. ‘I simply cannot understand Ruttie’s attitude – I do not blame her as most people here seem to do, but whenever I remember the dazed, scared child, like some mortally hurt animal, I come near hating Ruttie in spite of my great affection for her.

Jinnah’s rise had seemed unstoppable, but in 1918 he had scandalised Bombay high society by courting Ruttie Petit, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a Parsi baronet and one of the most ‘envied debutante[s] of her generation’.20 The patriarch of the family, Sir Dinshaw Petit, happened to be a vocal supporter of interfaith marriages, believing like many liberals at the time that they would be vital in gluing India into a single nation. When forty-two-year-old Jinnah had asked to marry his teenage daughter, however, Sir Dinshaw was horrified and banned the two from meeting. Jinnah and Ruttie continued their courtship, however, and Ruttie writes that Jinnah burned ‘storming passions into the very fibre of her being’. In his presence she appeared utterly radiant: ‘like a fairy,’ wrote one observer, and two months after her birthday they eloped, with Ruttie converting to Islam the day before the wedding.21 ‘Jinnah has at last plucked the blue flower of his desire,’ wrote Sarojini Naidu, who was closely following the scandal along with the rest of Bombay society. It was all very sudden and caused terrible agitation and anger among the Parsis: but I think though the child has made far greater sacrifices than she yet realises, Jinnah is worth it all – he loves her: the one really genuine emotion of his reserved and self-centred nature and he will make her happy.22 Sarojini’s optimism proved misplaced, however. Parsi society ostracised Ruttie, and her father summoned the couple to court, alleging that Jinnah had abducted her. Here Ruttie defiantly stood up and told the judge, ‘Mr Jinnah has not abducted me; in fact I have abducted him.’23 But in the aftermath she was excommunicated from her community, banned from all Parsi social occasions and told she could never return to her childhood home.