The Nightingale of India!

At a time when the standard career for girls was teaching, Sarojini Naidu stood apart with her passion for writing. A poet and politician, Sarojini Naidu, born Sarojini Chattopadhyay, was an exceptional student with knowledge of Urdu, Telugu, English, Bengali and Persian. Although her father initially desired her to become a mathematician, she made India proud with her work as a politician, orator, activist and poet. Recently celebrated by web search giant Google on her birth anniversary, she will always be known as the Nightingale of India.

How Sarojini Naidu reached her dreams:

After topping the matriculation examination of the University of Madras at the tender age of 12, Sarojini Naidu took a gap of four years before winning the Nizam Scholarship Trust and continuing her studies in England. At the age of 16, she joined the King's College London, which offered only evening classes for women students. King's College London has gone on to produce 12 Nobel prize winners in its tenure. Sarojini Naidu then attended Girton College, Cambridge, which has the distinction of being Britain's first residential college for women offering degree-level education.

Once Sarojini Naidu completed her studies, she published her first book of poetry "The Golden Threshold" and joined the Indian National Movement in 1905. The rest, as they say, is history.