Padmavathi : A Girl Poet

By G. VENKATACHALAM

SLENDER and of delicate build, pale of expression but with sparkling eyes, lively yet tenderly modest, refined and graceful, Padmavathi was the most winsome girl of her days in her college. There was a radiant simplicity about her manners that made her natural and most welcome in any society she moved in, and the childish innocence of her nature made her to be trusted and loved by all people, young or old, man or woman. She was very popular among her college-mates, and her professors universally regarded her as the brightest pupil and the best girl in the whole institution; and a few of them took great delight in inviting her to their rooms and entertaining her to talk and tea. Though reserved by nature and reticent in conversation, yet she could rise at times to brilliant heights in thought-provoking discussions either on religion or literature. The sad smiles playing about her mouth, and the melancholy expression in her wistful eyes, were but the inarticulate indications of the deep sufferings of her soul. What sadness was hers, none of us were able to understand or discover; even her father could not say why she was so moody and why she took such a pessimistic view of life. There was one long-drawn strain of sadness in all her songs, and the one background she had for all her poetic themes was the steely grey sky and the dark rolling clouds. Death, Pain arid Suffering—it is about these she sang the most:

Yet a brave heart was hers; she fought her battles lonely in the innermost recess of her heart and kept a serene and smiling face to her friends. Few knew the strugglings of her soul, and the brave fight this young, tender, fragile girl was putting up within herself. I recall most vividly to my mind, as I write this, the evening she, her friend Seeta, and myself sat on the sands of the beach near her college, watching .the magical play of colours on the monsoon clouds played by the last long-streaks of the setting sun, when, seeing her deeply absorbed in intense gloominess, I asked her why she was so sad? She woke up as if from a deep slumber and replied me in a slow and quiet tone: "What else could I be? The vast, deep, mysterious sea before me is calling out to me, and I am here imprisoned in the flesh. It is the 'Call of Freedom' and 'My Captivity' that make me so sad". It was in moods of this kind that she really revealed her soul. The Poet in her craved for more freedom, for more free-expression, more sympathy and more understanding. Her early bringing-up as a Theist limited her poetic vision and clipped the soaring wings of her imagination, and she had to struggle hard between the intellectual beliefs of her mind in which she was brought up, and the true expression of her real self. She was Pantheistic by nature, and the Theism in which she was nurtured left her cold in moments of true inspiration. She said to me one day, half jocularly and half in seriousness: "Your influence on me is pernicious. You want to lure me away from my present safe moorings of a simple faith to the spacious expanse of speculative philosophy and Pantheistic creed. My soul wants to soar into those regions, but my mind has vowed allegiance to the Theistic creed". It was in moments like these that she became eloquent, persuasive and interesting. "I like Shelley", she told me one day, " because he was a rebel, and I want to be a rebel; he was a philosophical anarchist, and I want to be one; he was mystical, and mysticism appeals to me". But her intellectual spoon-feeding both at home and in the college famished, instead of nourishing, her growing soul, and the sadness of her short life and of her sweet songs was due to this dualistic nature in her, fighting for supremacy and expression.

Padmavathi had all the instincts of a true poet. She was sensitive, dreamy and imaginative. She had not perfected the language in which she expressed her thoughts and ideas, and she had not mastered the technique of versification. Prosody, as such, was a sealed book to her. Yet she was bold and wrote vigorously and well. There are flaws in her rhymings; her metres are often faulty, and at times her grammar is bad, but the themes of her poems are lofty, noble, inspiring and sincere. What she would have achieved in this art through the medium of her mother-tongue, I will not speculate. The bravery of Rajput women ever fascinated her, and in the old legends and in the heroic deeds of this picturesque race, she sought her inspiration. Her two long poems of nearly 250 lines each, The Bride of Padshah and Neelavathi, are noble attempts to recall the wonderful chivalry of the Rajputs and the bravery of the Rajputnis. Her favourite English poets were Shelley, Wordsworth and Scott. Scott inspired her with his narrative ballads, and Padmavathi made a bold attempt to imitate him in her long poem of 600 lines, The Lay of the Staniks. It is a halting, straggling attempt, but nevertheless a daring venture for a girl of her age. Of Shelley, her Master, she wrote:

Shakespeare, she was very fond of, and never missed seeing any good play of Shakespeare. in Madras. I remember I took her and her two other friends to see the famous Raghavachar act 'Hamlet,' at the Victoria Public Hall, Madras, and I noticed how she thrilled with every fibre of her being at the psychological situations in the play, and especially with the soliloquies of the hero as enacted by Ragavachar. "He is a great actor," she said. That revealed the discerning critic in her.

Her life-story is shortly told. Born of cultured, middle-class Saraswat parents, she spent her childhood in South Canara, where she was educated as a child. Being Brahmos, her parents were attracted to the noble and selfless service rendered for the cause of the poor widows in India by that noble soul, Veerasalingam Pantulu, and they moved on to Rajahmundry to share in his great work. Her father Mr. Ramachandra Row, who is still alive, is an educationist, a visionary and a philanthrophist. He gave his all, property and money, for the cause he has championed,-the emancipation of the depressed classes. Padmavathi had her High School education there, and came to Madras to join the Queen Mary's College in 1918, where she studied till 1920 when she passed her Intermediate in first class. She was married in April 1920, and after ten days' serious illness, she passed away on the lap of her mother. She had courted death from infancy and the Lord of Death was compassionate to her. Her premature death cast a deep gloom on her friends, and I was the most affected of all. I was her 'new-found brother', as she used to call me, and discovering the genius in her, I encouraged her in her art and gave publicity to her poems. She often used to say to me, in a soft, sad tone, "Why do you want to make so much of me?" I ever evaded her query; I only knew that she was a genius; a quiet, unobtrusive, simple-minded child-genius.

A few months before she left Madras for Rajahmundry, she thurst into my hands a sheaf of hand-written manuscripts and said: "Now, choose, what you like best in these poems." I selected the poem A Lament which was so characteristic of her mood, and she smiled and said: "Yes, I like that too". I got it immediately published in Shama'a, an Inter- national Art Quarterly, edited by Miss Chattopadhyaya, who was also her friend. Little did I then realise that that poem, though written a year ago, was a prophetic utterance of her impending death, and in selecting that for publication, I was, albeit unconsciously, recording her obituary notice in an Art Journal, for that magazine came out of the press almost on the day of her death. A strange but sad coincidence!

Hers was a short life, but rich with sweet fragrant friendship. The young, tender, lotus-bud (Padma) that blossomed and enlivened us with such grace and beauty is no more with us, but the subtle aroma of her life still lingers with us to chasten and purify our little lives. Great friend, sweet soul, when may we see you again!