She was trying to play it down when she recounted this towards the end of her life. She was characteristically averse to being demonstrative, forming a remarkable tendency towards self-effacement, letting go of the difficulties of her formative years. But it was not easy at first for the simple reason that she did not, in fact, have her brothers and sisters around all the time. In order to ensure that the Ranis would not become instruments in the hands of scheming relatives (a futile effort as it turned out), the Maharajah had insisted on as much distance as possible from their natural families. All the same, the girls needed maternal care, resulting, in the end, in a compromise. For six months at a time, it was decided, Mahaprabha could stay in Trivandrum, giving company to both children. Following this, Kochukunji would assume charge for the remainder of the year. During these long sojourns the mothers, whose job was to be physically present but unobtrusive, could bring their other children and husbands also, but at the end of their respective terms, they would all return to Mavelikkara. So, while for six months Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had her family near her, she spent an equal measure of time pining and counting the days before their return.
It was letters, then, that early on became an important link between the Rani and her family. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s correspondence from these years comprises mainly of little notes sent very frequently, desperately conveying minute details of her days in Sundara Vilasam. Writing to her father appears to have been much more relaxed than to her mother, who acted a long-distance disciplinarian. Letters to Mahaprabha were normally rather formally addressed as ‘For the Royal Perusal of Mother’ and spoke more about her health, her studies, and other serious aspects. Occasionally, of course, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would throw in some humour too, as on 11 August 1904 when she spoke of the Junior Rani’s younger sister. ‘There was a big boil on Ikkavukutty’s bottom,’ she impishly informed those in Mavelikkara, adding: ‘At 11 ‘o’ clock today it burst … Please give the news to Father too.’90 The Junior Rani too would write to her aunt and uncle, but not quite as regularly as they would have liked. ‘I didn’t not write because I forgot you,’ she reassured Mahaprabha on one occasion. ‘It’s just that we have only one holiday a week, when we play around and do nothing else!’91
There was, to the immense relief of both mothers, however, one distinguished family member watching over the Ranis in the palace constantly, serving also as their guardian. And this was Kerala Varma, husband to the late Rani Lakshmi Bayi, with the title of Valiya Koil Tampuran (senior royal consort) at court. A man of formidable talents and ability, he is to this day considered the Kalidas of Kerala for his tremendous facility in Sanskrit poetry, and also as the Father of Malayalam Literature for his unprecedented work in developing vernacular composition as well. As consort to the former Senior Rani, he had had much time on his leisurely hands for decades, which he put to good use, maturing into an academician and scholar. He chaired the Textbook Committee for the Education Department in Travancore, revolutionising primary schooling in the state, besides winning esteemed fellowships of the Madras University and the Royal Asiatic Society in London. Into the 1890s, Queen Victoria had also dignified him into the Imperial Order of the Star of India, and he towered as an intellectual giant in Kerala society, arguably the second best known face of Travancore after his contemporary, relative and occasional rival, Raja Ravi Varma.
That is why when it was announced that the Ranis were committed to his avuncular care and supervision there was universal appreciation among all whose opinions mattered. As a later biographer of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would write (with that mild excess typical when writing about royalty in those days), ‘In the most plastic period of her life, she was placed under the tutelage of a poet-laureate and master-potter’ who with all his ability ‘fashioned that living soft clay into a model of culture, beautiful to behold and worthy of being imitated.’92 To be sure, it wasn’t only the girls who benefited from this arrangement. The Valiya Koil Tampuran also, recently widowed and with no children of his own, found the company of the Ranis a cheerful prospect, not to speak of the welcome challenge of moulding them into cultivated personalities. Beyond the academic implications, however, there were also more practical elements that an association with this accomplished elder provided the girls. For Kerala Varma was a seasoned, battle-scarred member of the court, who had lived through very interesting times, witnessing and participating in great intrigues and schemes, even spending five years of his life imprisoned and under house arrest. He had seen the highs and lows of royal life, enjoying sovereign favour one instant, suffering furious wrath the next. For his princely wards, he was eminently qualified, then, to guide them through all the intrigues and troubles a royal court was home to, preparing them for their tempestuous destinies ahead.
It was in 1859 that Kerala Varma married the late Rani Lakshmi Bayi. Within a brief period, he became a favourite at court, charming one and all with his charisma and talent. While to most he was to become known as ‘The Symbol of Renaissance in Malayalam Literature’,93 his other achievements were equally impressive. He became after his marriage an avid sportsman, establishing the first cricket club in Trivandrum, also excelling in rifle shooting, horse riding and so on. He was also fairly talented in music, having learnt to play the veena, the sarangi, and the fiddle, and training under stalwarts like Venkatadiri Bhagvathar and Kalyanakrishna Bhagvathar Sr. He also wrote a series of Kathakali dramas such as the Matsyavallabha Charitam, the Dhruva Charitam, the Parasurama Vijayam, etc. Treated as a great ornament of the court, he was in those early years popular with all its factions and groups.
But that was until the 1870s. Kerala Varma, over the years, got carried away by his own confidence and charisma, and began to participate in palace intrigues of a dubious variety. The ruling Maharajah Ayilyam Tirunal was no longer on good terms with his brother and heir Visakham Tirunal by then, and the young consort of the Senior Rani appears to have been unable to resist a temptation to meddle in their affairs, little prepared for the consequences he would provoke. While the Maharajah was fond of the Valiya Koil Tampuran at first, he now resolved to put him in his place. Restrictions were placed on Kerala Varma’s freedom and even meetings with his royal wife were closely regulated. This only led to more defiance on the part of the former, who gravitated towards the camp of the ruler’s rival, Visakham Tirunal. But here too the Valiya Koil Tampuran was not fully at home, continuing to play one brother against the other, until in 1875 he seemed to have upset both. Things got so bad that in a letter to the Resident he wrote, ‘My dear Major Hay, we are not fighting against the Maharajah when we say that you must give us British Protection. We live in the fear of life.’94 Sometime later he was most alarmed when Ayilyam Tirunal and Visakham Tirunal, archenemies of each other, seemed en route to a rapprochement. ‘The Maharajah & First Prince who used to perform all ceremonies separately have yesterday performed an anniversary ceremony together,’ he worried. ‘I fear they are plotting. I have shut myself here with the Rani,’ he stated before ominously adding, ‘I won’t take the drink & mixture.’95
Family members would later claim that an innocent, ethically spotless Kerala Varma found himself quite by accident an unwilling pawn in great games orchestrated at court. But the truth in 1875 was that he knowingly plunged himself into a notorious controversy. By now the Maharajah was also having difficulties with his Dewan, none other than old Sheshiah Shastri, and one morning an anonymous letter arrived at the latter’s official residence. ‘In the other day’s Privy Council,’ it warned, ‘there was a hint of trying to dispose of you by other means than asking you to resign … Do resign, or take care of your cooks & men about you.’96 Signed ‘Peter III’, similar letters appeared at Visakham Tirunal’s palaces also. The flustered Dewan, predictably, took the matter straight to the ruler, who, having had it examined by handwriting experts in Madras, discovered that the author was none other than the Valiya Koil Tampuran. In July the Resident asked innocently whether the latter knew anything about the whole aff
air. Kerala Varma denied any knowledge, further implicating himself as a liar.97
Ayilyam Tirunal was a progressive and forward-minded ruler, but he was not a man to be meddled with. Already upset with the Valiya Koil Tampuran for exceeding his station and for squandering his reputation by involving himself in affairs that were not his concern, he decided to take drastic action. With the full endorsement of the Governor of Madras, the Maharajah had Kerala Varma arrested, stripped of his titles and rank, and deported to north Travancore where he was kept in a regular prison in horrifying conditions for fifteen months. Rani Lakshmi Bayi, who at first took a determined stand to protect her husband, had to eventually give way and beg Ayilyam Tirunal to forgive his recent indiscretions. When her consort was taken away in a police carriage, she famously ran through the streets of Trivandrum, in full public view, weeping and unkempt, her hair flying behind her, in what was one of the most dramatic episodes in the annals of the royal family. But her appeals were turned down. Following this the Rani asked to be allowed to join her husband in prison. Obviously, Ayilyam Tirunal had no intention of permitting the queen to park herself in jail and score a moral point over him. Her movements were curtailed and her allowances held back, at times forcing her to seek loans from well-wishers and friends. Indeed, she was even warned that her adoption would be annulled and she would be sent back to Mavelikkara to spend the remainder of her days in an ordinary, shamed oblivion. But the Rani called the Maharajah’s bluff, aware of the legal impossibility of enforcing this threat. When one day she was told that Ayilyam Tirunal wished her to forget Kerala Varma and was looking to nominate a new consort, she coldly and very firmly replied, ‘I am not a widow.’98
Her husband’s willpower, however, was weaker, especially after being thrown into an inhospitable prison, where neither his high-caste position nor the standing of his aristocratic family aided him. Writing to seek forgiveness and clemency from the Maharajah, Kerala Varma admitted to his most ‘heinous offence’ in sending those controversial letters. Curiously, he confessed also to a whole host of other ‘treasonous acts’, which included being attracted to Christianity, corresponding with journalists, an addiction to marijuana and other narcotics, and so on, before concluding pitiably:
…Your Highness’ humble Slave cannot possible entertain the faintest hope of obtaining a kind pardon even from so condescending and tender hearted a Sovereign as Your Highness. But feeling the most sincere compunction of conscience and most heartfelt, contrite and [illegible] remorse for all his past misconduct, Your Highness’ most humble Slave begs to throw himself at Your Highness’ Royal feet and with tears in his eyes most piteously implores Your Highness’ kind forgiveness once for the serious offences he has committed. Whatever be Your Highness’ Slave’s future destiny by the nature of the arrangements Your Highness makes in disposing of him, whether to quit his native country and all relations and spend his days as an exile and a beggar, or to rove as a Fakir and perish in the snowy regions of the Himalayas, he will submit to it as his fate; but he will bear Your Highness’ Command with his head bowed down and shall never deviate even a hair’s breadth from it.99
When this pathetic letter from ‘Kerala Varma, State Prisoner’ failed to mute the Maharajah’s resolve, the ex-Valiya Koil Tampuran attempted to appeal to the softer, aesthetic side of the ruler by submitting an elaborate Sanskrit work called the Kshamapana Sahasra, literally meaning, ‘a thousand entreaties for forgiveness’. But when this too would not placate Ayilyam Tirunal, the (apocryphal) story goes (no doubt introduced to rehabilitate Kerala Varma to dignity after the death of the Maharajah), a vengeance arose in him and he began his Yamapranama Sataka, addressed to the god of death where, through barely disguised metaphor, the poet asks the latter to rid the earth of an evil king. Every day, it was later told with a theatrical flair, Kerala Varma would rise and pray to Lord Yama before composing a few verses, and on the very day he completed his work, he received, sensationally enough, news that the hateful Ayilyam Tirunal had died in Trivandrum a most painful death.
Either way, in 1880 when Visakham Tirunal came to the throne, one of his first orders was to free Kerala Varma and to reinstate him as Valiya Koil Tampuran. After five years of forced separation, thus, Rani Lakshmi Bayi was reunited with her husband, who in his gratitude composed a eulogy to the new Maharajah known as the Visakhavijaya (The Victory of Visakham Tirunal). In this, Visakham Tirunal is generously praised while his dead brother, to whom only recently Kerala Varma was submitting sycophantic eulogies, is cast as the villain of the piece. But perhaps because he had learnt his lessons the hard way, in the years ahead, a wiser Kerala Varma ‘devoted himself to the development of the Malayalam language and literature’.100 With a sympathetic ruler now enthroned, the sins of his past were forgotten or, at any rate, whitewashed, the blame resting solely on Ayilyam Tirunal and his notorious temper. Great works in both Malayalam and Sanskrit followed, as did honours from the British, also aiding in the reinstatement of the Valiya Koil Tampuran to favour. When Maharajah Mulam Tirunal came to the throne, he too was well disposed towards Kerala Varma; when the latter translated Aesop’s Fables into Malayalam, the young ruler dutifully wrote to his adoptive brother in law, ‘there cannot be a more elegant Malayalam composition.’101 By the end of the nineteenth century his abilities seemingly began to abandon him, however, and he wrote in 1896 to old Sir Sheshiah:
There was a time when [the] Goddess of Speech used to appear before me the moment I wished. At that time when the Goddess was at my beck and call, I could compose poetry instantly with the least effort … But now the wind has begun to blow in a different direction. Due to the want of practice the intuition to compose Sanskrit poetry has become dull.102
The death of Rani Lakshmi Bayi also took its toll on him and he confessed to another prominent poet of the day, the titular Zamorin of Calicut in Malabar, that since 1901 his literary faculties had never been the same.103 The two young Ranis kept him in good spirit though, and he remained a successful teacher, with Sethu Lakshmi Bayi once writing: ‘Because Appoopan [grandfather, as they used to call him] teaches us Sakuntalam it seems easier than before.’104 He also taught the two girls several other important Sanskrit works and even in his years of decline remained quite a formidable scholar. But in the early years of the twentieth century what was foremost in Kerala Varma’s mind was not the political future or princely career of his wards but an early, comfortable settlement for them in life with suitable, well-bred partners.
Marriage was on the cards for Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
3
Three Consorts
In November 1905, Trivandrum witnessed some very sumptuous celebrations on the birth anniversary of the Senior Rani. Palaces were lit up, colourful processions were paraded, addresses and public functions were convened, and thousands of poor were feasted at government expense. While royal birthdays were always occasions for great festivities, this one was especially significant, as Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had turned ten years old. An exciting thrill descended upon the capital, for in Travancore custom decreed that princesses must wed before the age of eleven. The court, naturally then, was abuzz with talk about the impending event, while patricians reminisced about the splendid pageantry of the last princely wedding in Travancore, fifty years before.1 Soon afterwards the government began logistical preparations for the seven days of revelry, but nothing was too clear about who the consort would be. Even Kochukunji, who was on duty in the palace at the time, could only write vaguely to Mahaprabha that she had ‘heard that the elder child’s wedding will be in the month of Medam’, i.e. April–May 1906 and that horoscopes had been sent for from the great families of the state. It remained to be seen which of the eligible young noblemen of Travancore would succeed in winning the Senior Rani’s royal hand and queenly approval.2
The choice wasn’t especially plentiful. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi could only, at best, pick her husband from one of ten highborn families of the realm. And precedents were such that even among these, one
or two historically dominated the honour of marrying the Attingal Rani. For all of the eighteenth century, for instance, consorts were chosen from the Kilimanoor house of Raja Ravi Varma. They were lineal heirs to the Rajahs of Beypore in Malabar, originally tributary to the Zamorin of Calicut, claiming descent from martial Rajput tribes in north India.3 It was in the days of the formidable Queen Ashure that they settled in Travancore, furnishing consorts to the Attingal Ranis, only to be toppled from their jealously guarded privilege by another house in the early nineteenth century. This was the family of the Rajah of Parappanad, who in turn had arrived in Travancore after Hyder Ali’s bloodthirsty invaders ejected them from their ancestral seat in Malabar. From early in the nineteenth century down till Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s time, every Senior Rani of Travancore had been married to a Parappanad consort. While the guardian Kerala Varma married the late Rani Lakshmi Bayi, his uncle was husband to the queen before her,4 and his uncle’s uncle to the matriarch even before.5 And through these consistent and expertly perpetuated marriages, the Parappanads had acquired tremendous influence at court and near-princely status in Travancore.
While the Maharajah requisitioned nominees from all ten houses in the state, he also granted Kerala Varma, as Valiya Koil Tampuran and caretaker of the Ranis, the privilege of recommending befitting spouses for them. Not willing to give up this prerogative and in order to preserve the longstanding influence of the Parappanads, the latter proposed an eminently suitable great-nephew of his called Rajaraja Varma. He was a man aged twenty at the time, studying at university, and was held to possess all the qualities the Maharajah sought in a consort to the Senior Rani. But the fact that he was over ten years older than Sethu Lakshmi Bayi did not endear him to Mulam Tirunal, and ‘the Palace’, Kochukunji reported, ‘is more interested in the person from Changanasseri’, also a member of the Parappanad house though from a different branch.6 The Valiya Koil Tampuran, however, was determined on having one of his direct nephews marry Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and quickly sent for an alternative from his home in Harippad. On 22 February, this boy, the younger brother of Rajaraja Varma, named Rama Varma, arrived in the capital and that very afternoon they proceeded to the palace for an interview with the Maharajah.
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