Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta), which became part of post-independence India. A Pirali Bengali Brahmin by birth, Tagore began writing poems at the age of eight; he published his first substantial poetry — using the pseudonym "Bhānusiṃha" ("Sun Lion") — in 1877 and wrote his first short stories and dramas at age sixteen. His home schooling, life in Shelidah, and extensive travels made Tagore an iconoclast and pragmatist; however, growing disillusionment with the British Raj caused Tagore to back the Indian Independence Movement and befriend Mahatma Gandhi. Despite the loss of virtually his entire family and his regrets regarding Bengal's decline, his life's work — Visva-Bharati University — endured.