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Writings of the age at which I began to contribute to the Bharati cannot possibly be fit for publication. There is no better way of ensuring repentance at maturity than to rush into print too early. But it has one redeeming feature: the irresistible impulse to see one's writings in print exhausts itself during early life.
The young students at the Sanskrit schools in Nadiya naturally found all this very amusing, and cracked jokes to their hearts' content on the crazy enthusiasts. In January 1510, Chaitanya suddenly took it into his head to become a Sanyasi or ascetic, and received initiation at the hands of Keshab Bharati of Katwa.
So long as the materials which go to form his life have not taken on their final shape they are apt to be turbulent in the process of their formation. This was the time when my brother Jyotirindra decided to start the Bharati with our eldest brother as editor, giving us fresh food for enthusiasm. I was then just sixteen, but I was not left out of the editorial staff.
When the Bharati entered upon its second year, my second brother proposed to take me to England; and when my father gave his consent, this further unasked favour of providence came on me as a surprise. As a first step I accompanied my brother to Ahmedabad where he was posted as judge. My sister-in-law with her children was then in England, so the house was practically empty.
Beside these, three sons of whom Bharata is the senior, he had a son named Bharata and a daughter called Bharati. And, O ornament of Bharata's race, because he is greatly honoured, he is also called the great. Vira is Bharadwaja's wife; she gave birth to Vira. He is joined with Soma in the secondary oblation of clarified butter and is also called Rathaprabhu, Rathadhwana and Kumbhareta.
This impudent criticism was my first contribution to the Bharati. In the first volume I also published a long poem called Kavikahini, The Poet's Story. It was the product of an age when the writer had seen practically nothing of the world except an exaggerated image of his own nebulous self.
The memory of this smile-sweetened fervour-illumined lifelong-youthful saint is one that is worth cherishing by our countrymen. The Bharati On the whole the period of which I am writing was for me one of ecstatic excitement. Many a night have I spent without sleep, not for any particular reason but from a mere desire to do the reverse of the obvious.
In an unlucky moment I began to write letters about my journey to my relatives and to the Bharati. Now it is beyond my power to call them back. These were nothing but the outcome of youthful bravado. At that age the mind refuses to admit that its greatest pride is in its power to understand, to accept, to respect; and that modesty is the best means of enlarging its domain.
I thus came down into the arena from the regions of sentiment and began to spar in right earnest. In the heat of the fight I happened to fall foul of Bankim Babu. The history of this remains recorded in the Prachar and Bharati of those days and need not be repeated here. At the close of this period of antagonism Bankim Babu wrote me a letter which I have unfortunately lost.
My friend's face fell as he muttered, "Yes, yes, they're not half bad." When these Bhanu Singha poems were coming out in the Bharati, Dr. Nishikanta Chatterjee was in Germany. He wrote a thesis on the lyric poetry of our country comparing it with that of Europe. Bhanu Singha was given a place of honour as one of the old poets such as no modern writer could have aspired to.
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