The Ganges of the holy and sweet water is our river:
Is there anything to compare with her glory?
Subramania Bharathi would spend hours gazing at the river Ganges. Enamoured by her magnificence, he wrote poems that eulogised India and moved millions of Indians to tears. Poetry came naturally to him. Even as a child, he would write poems effortlessly and has come to be known as the Tamil poet with the golden pen. As his close friend Somasundara Bharati writes:
…when I saw Bharati writing effortlessly at the age of seven, I realised that…the gift of writing poetry comes to a person not through scholarship but through some power at birth.
His poems, championing nationalist ideals, grabbed the public imagination. He became so well known for his poems that the title Bharati – meaning, the learned one – was bestowed upon him at the age of twelve by a congregation of poets and scholars. Today, his poems stand out as a testimony to his idea of a sovereign, democratic India.
Subramania’s journey as a poet, journalist and reformer is fascinating. His father, a Tamil scholar, enrolled the young Subramania into engineering and mathematics at the Hindu College High School. But he yearned to write poetry and had a flair for learning languages.
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