Sorrow, then, could not overstay its welcome in the capital and soon a joyous occasion presented itself, brushing aside the gloom of death. While the distinguished Raja Ravi Varma died in 1906, six months later the Junior Rani was married to his namesake and nephew from the Kilimanoor family. This younger Ravi Varma was among five candidates displayed to Sethu Parvathi Bayi, who selected him despite the fact that he was a dozen years her senior. Lovingly called Ittamar,31 he was a model student of high academic accomplishments, an alumnus of the Presidency College in Madras, and only the second member of the aristocracy, after the Senior Rani’s father, to have obtained a graduate degree.32 While he had studied history and Sanskrit at college, it was the latter subject that really attracted his interest, and he would go on to achieve a respectable reputation as a scholar. His age was worrying for some at court, as was his rigid orthodoxy, but he was a man of fine looks, ‘very handsome, with classical features’, placing him a notch above the young husband of the Senior Rani.33 Unlike Rama Varma, he was, however, a grown man, set in his ways with most of his personality already firmly defined. He was something of a nerd (with ‘less conversational powers than a flea’, to quote one contemporary),34 always with his Sanskrit manuscripts, diligently tackling one difficult verse after another, even as Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s husband was out riding or at tennis, acting more British than the British themselves. While Rama Varma was also young enough to entertain both Ranis and amuse them with his boyish charm, Ravi Varma on his visits to the palace acted his age and maintained an adult distance. It didn’t matter very much at the time, although eventually an older Junior Rani and he would find their marriage not particularly fulfilling and, ultimately, rather stifling.
Sethu Parvathi Bayi, interestingly, was developing into a vibrant and energetic individual, with passionate opinions and views on everything, along with refreshing hints of a rebellious streak. In the early years after their adoption, the cousins were close and the Junior Rani was recorded to be Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s ‘constant chum’.35 But in that relationship also there was an awkward hierarchy that would considerably influence the Junior Rani’s character. Early in life Sethu Parvathi Bayi understood that in their royal circumstances, so guided by convention and custom, her place was always secondary to that of her older cousin, the Senior Rani. This was essentially due to the structure of matrilineal society where age conferred precedence, even if the individuals involved were merely children. As the Junior Rani’s nephew remarks, ‘within the family the senior male and senior female members were equal’ with a status that prevailed over everyone else.36 In other words, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, despite being barely a year older than the Junior Rani, was equal in rank, position, and prestige to the Maharajah himself, while Sethu Parvathi Bayi was perpetually stuck with that ancillary title of Junior Rani.
For years she would attempt to rid herself of this tag, which was more a mark of courtesy than a station of any critical consequence. The British Government also officially only addressed the Maharajah and the Senior Rani as ‘Highnesses’ and it would be 1935 before Sethu Parvathi Bayi succeeded in wresting from them not only the style of ‘Her Highness’ but also the removal of the tag of ‘Junior’ from her title.37 Similarly, whenever the King Emperor of England deputed a new Viceroy of India, the outgoing as well as incoming British statesmen would send their formal greetings, known as kharitas, to the Maharajah and the Senior Rani separately, addressing them alike in his salutations. Indeed, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was the only non-ruling female in all India to receive such direct communications from the Crown Representative, being a dynastic descendant of one of the earliest allies of the British, the Attingal Rani.38 Similarly, while Sethu Parvathi Bayi was simply the Junior Rani of Travancore to colonial authorities, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and the Maharajah had a wordy string of embellished titles to flaunt.39 The former, then, keenly felt her lack of status and dignity, rubbed in every day by the ceremonial exactness around them.
While within the palace Kerala Varma made a conscious effort not to treat the two girls unequally, the outside world drew a clear distinction. For here they were not seen as little children but indeed as Senior Rani and Junior Rani, in their official roles. In the wider world outside Sundara Vilasam, the Junior Rani was in the shadow of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, who as the principal Attingal Rani commanded a vastly more esteemed treatment. Whether it was on state visits, or when they went out to public institutions, or even during their day-to-day ceremonial obligations, the Senior Rani’s role and prerogatives were superior to those of Sethu Parvathi Bayi. Minor incidents were enough to highlight this. Once, for instance, Zacharias D’Cruz, the well-known photographer, called at the palace and, as was customary when seeking an audience with royalty, presented gifts to the Senior Rani but did not offer anything to the Junior Rani. The Valiya Koil Tampuran quickly passed his own presents to her, but it would not be mere speculation to assume that Sethu Parvathi Bayi noticed her inferiority. Coupled with the fact that they were only children, all this is bound to have created some resentment in the only subordinate member in the entire royal house.40
But unlike Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, who lived up to her duties but withdrew into a shell of privacy as a person, the Junior Rani evolved into an active individual, full of zest and a great appetite for life. ‘Repose is decay, and the common and unlovely spell the death of culture,’ she would later declare as her motto.41 Perhaps because of the relative lack of attention, she constantly endeavoured to excel herself in more ways than one, and to stand out on her merits, carving a place for herself where none was offered by tradition. As her son would later remark, she ‘never blindly follow[ed] custom and tradition but all the same would respect them where it was desirable’.42 Her room at Sundara Vilasam demonstrated her keen interest in the arts, its walls adorned with personally chosen paintings and pictures, its shelves full of books, music instruments like the veena, violin, harmonium, and so on.43 Both girls were in fact instructed in music, with Sethu Lakshmi Bayi under the tutelage of one Padmanabha Bhagvathar, and the Junior Rani training under a Ramachandra Bhagvathar. But it was the latter who persisted and surpassed her cousin in the field. Into the future she would learn from such acclaimed musicians as Kalyanakrishna Bhagvathar Jr and ‘Veena’ Dhanammal, and such was her commitment to music that it became a matter of legend how, from the age of fourteen until she turned sixty-five, Sethu Parvathi barely went a day without six hours on the veena, honing her skills to perfection.44
While the Senior Rani was an outstanding student insofar as formal education went, it was Sethu Parvathi Bayi who stood out in extracurricular activities. She was irrepressible, and in 1916 the Senior Rani would write that even pregnancy did not deter her from playing her daily round of golf.45 ‘Exceptional women could subvert custom,’ in royal circles, writes Lucy Moore, and the Junior Rani too flouted rules when she pleased; in 1942, at the height of wartime austerity, her guests, watching a religious procession, were surprised to find themselves served excellent Scotch whisky by Sethu Parvathi Bayi even as her son piously led the most orthodox ceremonials before them.46 In a more amusing but equally telling story, years later in London, she met a wheelchair- bound friend who wanted to go to a flower show but felt embarrassed to go in that state. To everyone’s delight, the Junior Rani decided to give her a little more than emotional support and company. She hopped into another wheelchair, and the two ladies enjoyed a wonderful afternoon together, moving about in this bizarre fashion. ‘I never needed a wheelchair,’ Sethu Parvathi Bayi would go on to remark, ‘but it was a very comfortable way of seeing things.’47 Equally amusingly, the Junior Rani did not in the 1930s have any qualms about ‘having a footstool fitted to accommodate a dwarf to massage her legs while remaining hidden from onlookers’ as she drove about in her Rolls Royce.48 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, on the other hand, always remained a more orthodox, stately, establishment figure that could never put one foot wrong. The Senior Rani became famously regal but decidedly staid; the Junior Rani more adventurous
and interesting.
Observers did not miss this contrast in the personalities of the Senior Rani and her cousin. Henry Bruce found Sethu Lakshmi Bayi ‘more reserved, more conscious of her dignity’, keeping everyone at an arm’s length,49 while Kuppuswamy Aiyangar described the Junior Rani as ‘quick and vivacious’.50 While the former, encumbered by the weight of tradition, so emphasised by her mother, spent her life living up to her status as a public icon, the latter, whom custom offered no incentives, revelled in that which modernity presented a woman of talent and energy as her. As children they got along well; as the Junior Rani’s granddaughter would later tell, ‘They literally grew up together as playmates and sisters. [Sethu Parvathi Bayi] was the more adventurous one, leading while the quieter [Sethu Lakshmi Bayi] followed.’51 But as the girls grew into adolescence, taking greater stock of their respective situations in life and society, a cleavage of personality began to develop, slowly widening into a major breach. It was, to be sure, not inevitable, and they could have got along and worked together, bringing to the table their many gifts for the common good of Travancore. But the parental provenance of the Ranis was uncomfortable and such that the state was denied the possibility of cooperative action. Instead, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would head the government and promote the cause of progress through official and carefully thought-out reforms in infrastructure, trade, education and more, while remaining largely conservative, while the Junior Rani, exempt from the weight of office and title, could champion more radical causes like birth control and social revisionism; in the 1930s, while contemplating throwing open temples to low-caste Dalit groups, she is said to have demonstrated her conviction to the cause by herself dining with Dalits, which many would have deemed pure sacrilege at the time.52 In their respective areas of interest, both women left unexcelled legacies; had they worked in tandem, their service to their millions of subjects would have been greater still.
Destiny, however, intended otherwise.
By the end of 1910, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, now in her teens, was beginning to feel quite alone on account of fewer visits by her family to the palace. Mahaprabha, suffering from declining health and complicated pregnancies, was unable to travel to Trivandrum as frequently as she would have liked to, and it was the Junior Rani’s mother who was present in the palace for longer durations. Letters continued to be exchanged, but at one time Mahaprabha was so indisposed that the Senior Rani suggested that perhaps she should not exert herself even to write. It was not an easy recommendation, as these letters were her only link to her distant home.53 In 1908, when one of her little sisters, whom she was close to, died in Mavelikkara, she could not attend the funeral as tradition prohibited royalty from being seen at private ceremonies of any nature. Kochukunji had, in fact, given Sethu Lakshmi Bayi reason to believe that her sister was actually improving when a telegram arrived with bad news. Tormented by her natural desire to be with her grieving mother, yet trapped within the walls of the palace, all she could do was write, saying, ‘I am sorry that I cannot be with you.’54 Later that month the Rani sought to invite her parents to stay with her, but as it was Kochukunji’s turn in Trivandrum, permission was withheld and they had to wait for a prolonged period to see one another. Visits became so difficult to arrange that at one time in the early 1910s, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi even expressed fear that her youngest sister in Mavelikkara might forget who she was because they met so rarely.55 In words perhaps too wise for her age, she remarked: ‘Through attachment, alas, people have to suffer.’56
The result of all this was that the Senior Rani matured quickly and reconciled to her practical isolation from her family as well as the personally difficult conditions under which she would always have to live. Part of this was due to political pressure; if the Maharajah were to die before an adult male heir could succeed him, the mantle of power would fall on Sethu Lakshmi Bayi. Already, as Attingal Rani, she felt heavily burdened, and, as her daughter would remark, ‘the last thing she wanted was to rule a state. She used to say that when she went to worship our family deity, she would pray that this burden should not be thrust upon her.’57 But here again Mahaprabha was quick to nip such self-doubt and self-effacement in its politically damaging bud. Even sitting faraway in Mavelikkara, the lady was able to instil into her daughter ‘the necessity of doing one’s duty, regardless of obstacles’, pushing aside Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s reluctance on the subject of one day possibly governing Travancore.58 In due course, Mahaprabha would find an ally in Rama Varma also, and together they would give the Senior Rani the confidence that would allow her one day to not only assume the reins of power, but to exercise it effectively, even if reluctantly.
But in these early years, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi remained lonely, also developing a distance from the Junior Rani and Kochukunji, taking refuge in her library, reading whenever she could after her religious and ceremonial commitments. She earned, in the process, a reputation as something of a bookworm, always engrossed in Austen and Dickens, or reading biographies of world leaders, or history, poetry, travelogues, and a whole set of foreign journals like Punch, the satire magazine, or the London News.59 ‘Naturally of a reserved disposition,’ a contemporary observed, ‘small talk was not her favourite pursuit and her taste for reading appeared to her as a welcome haven.’60 To some, with her aloofness and regal detachment, she began to seem a snob. But what is interesting is that despite her vast reading and increasing knowledge of the world, the Senior Rani, with her ‘inexcitable and very retiring nature’, did not demonstrate any interest in actually experiencing it all; she was content with reading about things and not encountering them in person.61 This was in contrast to the Junior Rani, who also read a great deal but not so much as to neglect her several other activities and dreams of travel. Some did attempt to get Sethu Lakshmi Bayi to take an interest in the outdoors and venture beyond her library, but at that stage, with her worries about Mavelikkara, nothing attracted her. ‘Mrs Gresham is trying to get me interested in golf,’ she wrote to her father. ‘Though I have not the slightest interest in it, out of politeness I did not say so to them.’62
In the meantime, the Maharajah decided that it was now time for her to fulfil her duty to the state and their dynasty by producing children. He was by now in his early fifties without a grown heir, which became a pressing necessity with each passing day. While Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was being prepared to assume charge in the event of a contingency, Mulam Tirunal preferred the idea of avoiding such a course altogether. But only if a prince were born now could he be brought up and trained to rule, over the coming decades, by which time the Maharajah would reach his precarious seventies. Considering that all the recent rulers had not survived their fiftieth birthdays, Mulam Tirunal was naturally anxious for a sufficient and healthy line of succession to be established as early as possible. Orders were formally issued, hence, that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, now fourteen and evidently old enough, should consummate her marriage with Rama Varma.
The storytelling and games of hopscotch were over and the two were to live together now as husband and wife, with that somewhat burdening responsibility of preserving the royal line hanging over their heads. Privacy, in such matters, was also at a complete discount and it was left to court astrologers and managers to work out the details. This was hardly an exclusive feature of the court in Travancore. In the north, in Gwalior state, for instance, when the Maharajah negotiated marriage with a second wife, she was informed that he would ride out with her on Monday mornings and spend Thursday evenings in her bedchamber, with the rest of his time allotted to his other wife and mistresses.63 In Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s case, the astrologers studied celestial conditions and decreed that 12 February 1909 was an auspicious evening for the queen to share her bed with Rama Varma. Kochukunji wrote to her sister in what was a feeling echoed at court: ‘Today is a good day for us and the people of Travancore.’64
No sooner had the Senior Rani started living with Rama Varma than she began to be subjected to all sorts of traditional medical treatments to a
ugment her prospects. A dosage of tonics was ingested daily to invigorate her fecundity, even as Mahaprabha fretted and worried in Mavelikkara about their proper administration in her absence. Rama Varma too suddenly found himself facing an onslaught of pressure and public expectation about this mission to father a Maharajah. No chances were taken. For instance, by this time Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had moved into a separate palace building known as Sarasvati Vilasam, where her childless great-aunt had lived. Adherents at court were quick to connect the late Rani’s barrenness to an imagined curse on the building and hysterically prescribe another home for the current Rani. Accordingly, Mulam Tirunal ordered the construction of a new palace within the same compound for Sethu Lakshmi Bayi to occupy. She named it Moonbeam, and would spend most of the next decade here, while her husband lived nearby in a separate building, going to see his royal wife at previously calculated times and dates.
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