Ivory Throne

by Manu S. Pillai

  In the meantime, there was great excitement in the capital when a declaration was made that the renowned Maharajah of Baroda, Sir Sayajirao Gaekwar, was come to Travancore on a state visit with his equally illustrious wife, Maharani Chimnabai II in July 1915. The Gaekwars were, husband and wife, accomplished to formidable levels, with a most fascinating history. The Maharajah was raised as an illiterate farmhand until he was twelve, when suddenly, by a curious twist of fate, he was adopted into the royal family of Baroda and enthroned as its ruler. Tutored and trained thereafter by Sir T. Madhava Rao (who had been Ayilyam Tirunal’s minister in the 1860s) and F.A.H. Elliott, he became a reformist ruler with a hotly disputed streak of rebellion and independence. During the Delhi Durbar in 1911, when King George visited India and held court for all his feudatory Maharajahs and Nawabs, the Gaekwar had refused to bow to him, literally turning his back to the mighty Emperor of the British Raj. He had since become, unusually enough for a feudal potentate, a darling of Indian nationalists. His wife, Chimnabai, was also most interesting, having broken the purdah system that kept most north Indian ladies in veiled and backward seclusion, and whose favourite sport was roller-skating around her palace corridors, with her sari flying behind her.70 She had even authored a well-received book called The Position of Women in Indian Life (1911), recommending amelioration through options ranging from decorative needlework to hard farm labour. The Gaekwars were also extensively well travelled and among India’s earliest princes to sojourn to Europe and America, despite misgivings of religion and caste. In every respect, then, they were unconventional visitors to the durbar in Travancore, and all in this cautious cocoon of conservative traditionalism anticipated their arrival most eagerly.

  Mulam Tirunal was desirous that everything should be perfect for the reception of his celebrated guests, not least because Baroda stood higher in that jealously sustained order of precedence of Indian princely states, but also because over recent years it had made such tremendous progress under Sayajirao that it exceeded Travancore’s longstanding record in enlightened governance. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was also nervous about the visit, for she would have to play official hostess for the first time. Writing to her family, she expressed embarrassment about being forced to receive such cultivated personalities in ‘this old Sarasvati Vilasam’, and wondered about what she could do to beautify her unfashionable surroundings.71 An army of chandelier cleaners, floor polishers and painters moved in for a few days, with the resultant noise carrying over to Moonbeam, where the Senior Rani worked out the minor details of the visit such as the delicacies to be offered to the guests, appropriate presents for the Maharani, and suitably urbane conversational openings that would not betray her own self-conscious experience of the world. The Junior Rani in the meantime expressed a desire to receive the guests separately in her own right instead of meeting them at Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s formal reception, but permission was not granted. It was, to her regret, considered ‘bad etiquette’ to have guests received by a secondary princess.72

  On 8 July the Gaekwars and their ménage arrived in Trivandrum and were evidently impressed by the arrangements made by their hosts. ‘Every house, however small, had its token of welcome to the Maharajah and the Maharani,’ one of their English companions noted, adding: ‘the road was hung from tree to tree with strings of flowers and leaves, neat school-houses and every village seemed to have poured out twin floods of boys and girls to line the roads, to wave paper flags, to cheer.’73 The children were plausibly unwilling participants in this spectacle, hardly aware of whom they were waving at really, but in the capital the government was all ready for the final show. The Maharajah called a special durbar for his guests and hosted a banquet in their honour, even as the state forces saluted and fired gun salutes and the majestically caparisoned elephants trumpeted and marched. The Gaekwars inspected a number of establishments and institutions, to study the modernisation of Travancore. On 9 July, for instance, they went to the Napier Museum outside the fort and to the public library. They also visited the School of Art, the Maharajah’s Colleges, and the slightly newer Women’s College where Miss Watts had, somewhat bizarrely, orchestrated a chorus to render the state anthem of Baroda in Malayalam, to the accompaniment of a piano and violins.74

  The formal visit to the Attingal Rani at Sarasvati Vilasam, however, turned out to be a short affair and not entirely worth the alarm Sethu Lakshmi Bayi brought upon herself. Due to all the formality the women could not speak for too long beyond regular courtesies and the call did not last more than fifteen minutes. The Ranis followed the Gaekwars to their guest house after this, where, however, they enjoyed a forty-five-minute discussion. ‘Both ladies,’ the Baroda records note, ‘speak English fluently and are vastly interested in affairs of the world beyond the boundaries of Travancore.’75 The next morning they paid their formal call on the Maharajah and the Maharani, and this time sat with them for nearly two hours. Describing the whole thing to her parents, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi said:

  If you ask me what I spoke to them for so long, I would not be able to explain. It was mainly about differences in administration and caste that we spoke. They asked many questions concerning the customs here. They found it difficult to understand our [matrilineal] system. They have pressed their invitation on us to visit Baroda. I never thought they would esteem us so highly. Since everything went off so well, I must say I am very happy.76

  Indeed, Sayajirao Gaekwar was most charmed by both the Ranis and it was at his insistence that they spent such a prolonged period of time with him and his wife. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi rose several times to take their leave, only to be persuaded to stay for some time longer and continue chatting. She would have liked to take up their invitation and visit Baroda, though as she wrote dryly to her father, ‘you know the conditions here very well. I think it is better left unsaid.’77 Nevertheless, both guests left a very good impression on the Senior Rani who was also amazed that they had ‘the extraordinary ability to draw out other people’s opinions and to express their own very succinctly’, which she found most interesting.78 The Gaekwars too returned very delighted by their trip and the Maharani wrote to Sethu Lakshmi Bayi shortly after she was back in Baroda: ‘After seeing Your Highnesses’ lovely country, we find our own part dull and ugly. How I envy living in such exquisite surroundings!’79

  For the next few years Sethu Lakshmi Bayi would remain in touch with the Gaekwars, and Chimnabai, almost like a testy matron, wrote to her many months later asking if she had taken her advice and decided to explore the India beyond Travancore yet. In 1916, writing from Kashmir, she was more nostalgic, saying: ‘This month last year we were in Malabar and on our way to you and now this year we are about three thousand miles apart [sic] but the distance does not prevent my thinking of you.’80 Later, in 1917, on hearing of the birth of a daughter to the Junior Rani, she would write to Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, wondering whether the baby looked like her mother or father; and so a friendly exchange continued between the two. But with time it slowly petered out and into the 1920s the two women appear to have lost touch. They would never meet again but Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was hugely fascinated by Chimnabai, who continued to lead an interesting life till 1939 when the death of her husband and the succession of a badly disposed step-grandson, caused her to leave Baroda for Bombay. Sadly, her marriage with the Maharajah also took a blow some years before his death, when, for all his public pronouncements on the moral necessity for monogamy in India, he took a French mistress, humiliating an already embittered Chimnabai.81 The untimely deaths of three of her sons and the early widowhood of her daughter also took its toll, but the indomitable woman carried on until her own demise in a new India in 1958.

  In Travancore, in the meantime, there was excitement on the domestic front. The Junior Rani, who had suffered a miscarriage in 1914, gave birth to a baby girl in 1916. She was named Karthika Tirunal Lakshmi Bayi Tampuran, with the title of First Princess of Travancore. But for Sethu Lakshmi Bayi happier news came in the form of permission f
rom the Maharajah for her to leave the fort and construct a new country residence for herself. Soon after her eighteenth birthday, Mulam Tirunal had granted her a twenty-seven-acre property in Poojappura village, once occupied by his imbecile brother. A token sum of Rs 10,000 was given to the Senior Rani to construct a palace there, with the remainder taken from the Sripadam treasury. Two years later the Junior Rani was also granted property in Kowdiar with Rs 45,000 to construct a residence for the Maharajah’s heir. It was quite unprecedented for female members of the royal house to leave the fort, but Mulam Tirunal presumably found this an easier way to contain the disaffection between both Ranis and to remove their unhappy relations from a space he considered sacred.82 Both Ranis, for their part, seemed only happy to leave and stay away from each other entirely.

  The progress of work at Poojappura was slow, though, and it was only by 1916 that the main building was ready and the construction of the compound walls and the renovation of the old palace inside possible. ‘I think it will be all over by next summer and habitable by then,’ the Senior Rani wrote to her father hopefully that year.83 But final works would be delayed for many more months and it was in 1918 that the completion of the whole palace appeared in sight. In the meantime, the talented but little known artist Mukundan Tampi was commissioned for a series of portraits and landscapes; and the final creations, especially the latter, were very well done.84 A lot of new furniture was also crafted, based on models seen in European catalogues, and by the end of the year everything was finally ready. It was Rama Varma who took the lead in these matters. ‘He was a most tasteful interior decorator,’ a granddaughter would later tell. ‘The many villas and mansions he designed were really excellent and the insides were beautifully furnished. He got the very best available things from abroad: crystal and porcelain artefacts, carpets and curtains from Italy and so on.’85 The official and traditional name of the palace was Vijaya Vilasam, the Palace of Victory. But it was given a more anglicised identity by the Valiya Koil Tampuran. He took the first part of his wife’s name and, considering that the palace was perched atop a hillock, devised the word ‘Sethu-Lakshmi-Mount’. This was then given some more style and the new residence of the Senior Rani came to be known as Satelmond Palace. The Junior Rani’s home, formally named Vasantha Vilasam, the Palace of Eternal Spring, was known simply as the Kowdiar Palace among the commonfolk.

  In the first week of 1919 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and Rama Varma moved into Satelmond after conducting an elaborate housewarming ceremony. The former’s family also came down to Trivandrum for the occasion, but far from becoming a happy time of celebration, the move to Poojappura was inaugurated by dire tragedy. Mahaprabha had for over a decade now been having trouble with hypertension, and in those days there wasn’t much that could be done about it even though it was one of the leading causes for premature deaths across the world. On 7 January, while at Satelmond, her blood pressure went up quite suddenly and she felt very indisposed, taking to bed right away. As this had become quite a common issue with her, nobody was unusually anxious until her condition seemed to worsen and she began to get very ill. By now doctors attached to the durbar had been summoned and were attending to her but all in vain because less than twenty-four hours later, on 8 January, forty-six-year-old Mahaprabha suddenly died in Poojappura, presumably because of heart failure.86

  Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was shattered by the unexpected demise of her mother. While no letters or documents survive to show her exact feelings, her family members would later tell how this changed her completely and that after grieving at first, she realised that her siblings had perhaps lost far more than she had. After all, upon becoming Attingal Rani, distance and royal reservations had kept her away from her mother, giving her time to develop some inner strength of her own. But for her siblings, Mahaprabha was everything; even Kuttan Tampuran was inconsolable with grief. Suddenly twenty-three-year-old Sethu Lakshmi Bayi became the matriarch of her family, with all her younger siblings consigned to her care. ‘She dared not break down,’ her granddaughter tells; and she didn’t.87 She took charge quietly but almost immediately. The very memory of her mother provided her the strength she needed. There was a favourite photograph of Mahaprabha showing the grand lady posing in traditional attire, looking straight at the viewer, proud and confident as ever. This was framed and kept by her bed by Sethu Lakshmi Bayi so that every morning when she rose, she could look at it and remember the indomitable and powerful personality her mother had been.

  All her courage was needed because her family was extremely vulnerable and nearly broken at this time. In accordance with the matrilineal system, with his wife’s death, Kuttan Tampuran had no place in Mavelikkara now, and new arrangements were made for his children, who were entrusted into the formal guardianship of aunts and grandmothers. This was painful for all of them and Sethu Lakshmi Bayi wrote to her father comfortingly sometime afterwards: ‘I know when you went there you would have had memories that would be most unbearable, but I hope that with time, when the new arrangements have become the usual routine, the mind’s troubles will decrease.’88 Kuttan Tampuran permanently moved to his own home in Kilimanoor, with only the status of a visitor in the house of his children. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi did her best to cheer him up now and then, as his health deterioriated in the years ahead, and he became afflicted by Parkinson’s disease. ‘Today is your birthday,’ she wrote on one occasion. ‘The usual custom of congratulating the birthday person and blessing him with long life can, I think, be improved. I pray that He will grant you long life and every happiness so that you may bless us motherless children, for a long time to come.’89 That was not to be, and when his end came in 1926 the Rani mourned once again in silence, prohibited by convention from attending the ‘private’ funeral of her father.

  Her siblings were not, in the meantime, faring any better either. The youngest boy, who was lovingly called Kunjunni, and who was only eight, would recount later how their caretaking relatives had neither interest nor time for any of them and that there was an enduring feeling of being orphaned.90 There was some respite though because the Senior Rani always made sure she could have them in Trivandrum whenever possible, and her sister Kutty Amma, who was older and married by now, took charge and pulled everyone close. But there was certainly a break, aggravated by the inevitable circumstance of the older boys growing up and leaving home for their higher studies as well. Nothing would be the same again for Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s family. But, as had become a defining feature of her personality, this too she accepted with a stiff upper lip, and decided to move on.

  All these changes and the sudden weight of responsibility brought about a mood of downcast melancholy over Satelmond Palace. For a whole year after her mother’s demise, the Senior Rani mourned in silence, as the usual series of rituals, concluding with Mahaprabha’s ashes being dispersed in the holy waters of the Ganga by her eldest son, were conducted. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi looked rather serious all the time, bottling up her feelings even more. Her husband, realising this, decided that perhaps a change in scenery would help her avoid further depression. So in the summer of 1920, instead of going to one of the usual hill stations within Travancore, Rama Varma prepared a programme for a visit to Kodaikanal in the Madras Presidency. The idea of leaving the state behind and going to a fresh location for a while succeeded in bringing some colour into the Senior Rani’s life, and when the Maharajah graciously sanctioned the proposal, everyone was excited.

  A house was rented for the three months they were to spend at Kodaikanal and a week before their departure, carpets, paintings, curtains, and other furnishings had been sent off so that by the time they arrived the place would be all homely. On 23 March the Senior Rani and the Valiya Koil Tampuran set out by car via Nagercoil and arrived in Tinnevelly by suppertime the next day. Having spent the night there, they boarded their train for the famous temple of Madurai the next morning but the journey turned out to be dusty and hot. By late afternoon they arrived at their destination where a Malayali called
Velayudha Menon received them with a band of others, garlanding and otherwise treating them as customary, and escorted them to the palace of the Rajah of Ramnad, where arrangements had been made for their stay that night. The very same evening, having recovered her spirits, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi accompanied her husband to the famous temple of the goddess Meenakshi built in the typical Dravidian style with all its dramatic effect and attention to detail. She was fascinated by the beautiful structures she saw there: the twelve gopurams (gateways) the tallest of which was over 170 feet high; the massive tank; the very many mandapams or hallways flanked by exquisitely carved pillars and decorations, including the ‘thousand-pillared hall’; and so on. The architecture seems to have taken her breath away more than the goddess’s image in the main shrine, and she wrote to her father later: ‘those who come to sight see [sic]would get more satisfaction from the place than those who come to worship.’91 She reportedly also made some valuable presents to the deity, and instituted an endowment, which are said to be still in operation.92