 According to Ashapurna, she and her sisters used to compete with each other by composing and reciting poems.This gave rise to an unusual tenacity which inspired Ashapurna to secretly send a poem to "Sishu Sathi" in 1922.Ashapurna was thirteen and her poem "Bairer Dak" (The Call from the Outside) was published, with a request from editor Rajkumar Chakravorty to send more poems and stories.