How I love to come to Kovalam and see you! Is the sea very rough? Has the keeper Govindan got over his illness? You remember he said he was ill the day we went there. Oh! How I miss you! I spent the night—that is—slept in your giant bed. And there is a particular aroma which reminds me of you. It is a very good smell. I love it.70
The Maharani did often proceed to Kovalam with the children, and a number of buildings sprang up around the principal ‘castle’ for their use and for the retinue and guards that invariably accompanied them. And on each such visit, Rama Varma would welcome his royal wife and daughters by firing a small cannon into the sea.71 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi took an active part in designing outdoor aspects of this house too. Soon a ‘fabulous’ rose garden embraced the whole place, and a ‘sea of roses’ wafted ‘their glorious perfume all around’.72 The tower room offered a breathtaking view, and the family often sat there and watched the ‘splendid vision’ of the sun ‘sinking slowly, inch by glorious inch, into the sea’ after which they would watch ‘the shifting, entrancing colours on the water.’ The building was designed specially to fit in with the natural aesthetic of the sea. ‘The windows had glass, shaped like long petals. The glass was of an unusual shade of green, similar to the under-side of the huge waves. When the windows, with their wooden Venetian blinds were closed, one felt that we were under water beneath the sea,’ Princess Indira would fondly remember.73 Fisherfolk would also often bring them ‘treasures from the sea, such as sea anemone, coloured shells, and once even a sting ray’s tail,’ which would then be stored in an attic that was accessible only through a tiny door that was ‘more magical than the door in Alice in Wonderland ’.74
Outside, a part of the grounds was cleared and a dining area, complete with a granite dining table and chairs, was constructed from rocks hewn off the beach. ‘Even better was the “drawing room” they constructed. The ground was covered with square granite slabs of alternate black and light grey, resembling a large carpet, and there were granite chairs fixed at strategic points, and a round granite table in the middle.’75 A flight of similar granite steps led down to the cliffs and the beach, and very often the princess would ‘get up early in the morning and sit on the steps, gazing at the sea, the wind roughly caressing my face’, while on other times one of her ‘chief delights was to stand in the water, waiting for each wave to come near and then duck below it, and feel it breaking over my head’.76 Sometimes the Valiya Koil Tampuran would arrange for the girls to join local fishermen when they went out to sea on small rafts of wood. ‘My sister and I loved these rides. It was an exciting experience. We would be drenched to the skin when we returned.’77 Their parents, in the meantime, would wait back at the beach with hampers of food spread out on a sheet over the sand, welcoming their daughters for a quick bite when they returned.
When the ‘hot weather’ arrived, the whole family would travel to Peermade, which became a favourite sanctuary from the formality of life in and around the royal capital. The highway to Kottayam, and then the road to the high ranges were cleared of all traffic, and with a pilot car and an elaborate entourage, the family would arrive in the hills. It was the principal highlight of the year for locals. ‘The staff was always smaller on these trips, and so everyone let their hair down to some extent. Only the secretary and manager, the four personal maids, four or five pattakkars, the head cook and two assistants, and some menials would join her. Not more than twenty-five servants. Of course the others had their own staff as well, but it was still on a smaller scale altogether than in the palace.’78 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi purchased a grassy hillside here, and a beautiful house, with stone walls and wooden rafters, was built, surrounded by the usual ancillary buildings. The house commanded a striking view of the valley below, and Rama Varma often rode to the local club to play golf at Travancore’s highest course with the Resident, who too maintained an official residence here. Meanwhile, the children and the Maharani took long walks and picnicked by the brook passing through their grounds. There was also, nearby, the old, traditional summer house of the royal family, but Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was no longer certain she had access to it now that the Maharajah was in power and since he used it often with the Junior Maharani.
In due course the Valiya Koil Tampuran also constructed ‘Villa Manimala’ at Pothencode, set amidst vast rubber estates. At the centre, atop a hillock, stood a large, proud stone bungalow ‘that had vistas of the rolling countryside from every window’, with the gardens full of fountains and pink Edward rose shrubs;79 ‘on a clear day one could even see the sea in the far distance from the terrace’.80 ‘I was fascinated by the leopard-skin carpet on the floor as soon as you entered,’ one of his grandchildren would recall, ‘and the different animal heads on the walls.’81 The whole place was maintained in a very English fashion, and was ‘very stately looking’ with orderlies all over the place as late as the 1970s. ‘There were pile carpets and heavy furniture all around,’ a great-granddaughter would say, ‘and stuffed animals and trophies in the lobby and living room. Some of them were so scary and almost alive. We kept a safe distance from them while walking past.’82 The prize of the collection was, in fact, a stuffed bear, one on which the girls often enjoyed climbing as a mission of childish grit! Sometimes they read by the fireplace, while the Maharani reposed in a rocking chair, ‘resting her eyes’.
After visits to Coonoor, another summerhouse called Aspect Lodge (‘of sweet and pleasant memories,’ Princess Lalitha remarked)83 was purchased there, and years later the family would sometimes holiday in Ooty as well, where the Junior Maharani maintained an estate of her own. ‘A part of the journey was made in trains and there were lovely carriages reserved for us,’ the Maharani’s nephew recalls, ‘with a sitting area and a bedroom, and perfect furnishings. It was great fun and whenever the train stopped at stations, soldiers would present arms and guard the carriage. A lot of vendors and people with all kinds of interesting wares would be squatting on the platform, and if the Maharani wished, they would be allowed inside and we would all choose what we liked.’84 Each year, thus, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and her family would divide their time between these beautiful homes they built for themselves, returning to Satelmond Palace in time for religious ceremonies, state banquets or whenever the Maharajah demanded their presence. ‘Every few months,’ Princess Indira recalls, ‘a message would arrive from Kowdiar Palace that we had been away from the capital too long, and must now come back.’85 Promptly, then, everything was packed and the family would make its way back to dear old Satelmond for months of temple visits, processions and religious ceremonies, eagerly awaiting their next ‘escape’ to the privacy of their other beloved homes.
These moves in themselves were always sensational affairs. Writing to Rama Varma from Vellayini in 1933, Princess Lalitha recorded how ‘Yesterday evening the bus came here bringing the new soldiers. I do not know why, but I know they are going [back] this evening. This evening the other set of maids are coming with the soldiers so that all the maids here are very excited.’86 Arrangements had to be made to transfer hundreds of servants and members of staff to whichever house the Maharani had chosen to spend that part of the year. Soldiers would arrive in advance to take up their positions at the gates and around the perimeter. In special buses, chattering maids were driven up to ready the place before the royal family arrived. By the time Sethu Lakshmi Bayi vacated Satelmond Palace everything would be wound down. A bare skeletal staff of caretakers, sweepers and others would stay back, always unhappy at missing out on these great excursions to the hills or the countryside. The bedrooms, libraries, stores and other important wings of the palace were shut down, and bagsful of clinking keys would be carried to the next location. And when the royal motorcade drove up the gates of Lalindloch Palace or Halcyon Castle, the military forces would be waiting to blow the trumpet and welcome the Maharani in state to her chosen home for the season.
The limousines used by the Maharani and her family had the State emblems where the license plate was normally locat
ed. Whenever the Maharani, her daughters, and [later] granddaughters were riding in the car, each end of the front mudguard would fly the State flag (depicting a conch shell in the middle with two elephants on either side in gold, on a red silk background). If the consorts were travelling on their own, the flags were not flown. Again, when the car passed the main gate where a unit of the State Force was on sentry duty, the soldiers would come out, present arms, and sound the bugle. The consorts were entitled to a simple rifle salute by the sentry if they were not accompanying members of the ruling family.87
There was, in this lifestyle, something very quaint and old-worldly, and while the Junior Maharani embarked on world tours and travels, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi remained in Travancore, living the laid-back life of a country aristocrat (though many saw it less romantically as a kind of self-imposed exile from the capital). She took her children out for picnics and drives, viewed motion pictures at their little private palace theatre, watched her daughters put up plays and dance performances, admonished Princess Lalitha when she fell off trees or hurt herself at football, and generally enjoyed a slow, retired pace of life surrounded by her extended family. With the aura of royal bodyguards, legions of servants and so many others constantly bowing and curtseying before her, a great princely ambience, however, informed every aspect of this. ‘Everything about her,’ the writer Nihal Singh wrote in an American newspaper, ‘bespeaks refinement, kindliness and intellectuality.’88 She also retained that famous charm when entertaining those who came to pay her their respects, despite the formality that always encompassed all her interactions with people outside family circles. As late as 1936, five years after she had given up power, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi continued to leave a lasting impression on all whom she met. ‘We like the Senior Maharani and her family,’ recorded the then Resident.89 He thought the Maharajah was ‘boyish and pleasant’ and the Junior Maharani ‘charming, gay, and lively.’90 But the ‘best of the lot’ in Travancore was Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, ‘a real little “grande dame”’, and her husband and ‘very nice’ girls.91 ‘Pity,’ he concluded, ‘we don’t have more to do with them.’92
While the Maharani made every effort to lead a peaceful, quiet life, there were others who were determined to ensure that her retirement was not quite as tranquil as she hoped. Having relinquished power in November 1931, it took almost a year for her pension and settlement to be resolved, soon after which Mr Pritchard’s term as Resident concluded, and one Mr D.M. Field arrived in the state. It was a perpetual fear she entertained that successive British representatives, who had had no direct experience of her rule, might be less inclined to rein in the Maharajah if he chose to harass her unnecessarily. Small incidents had already begun to show that no sympathy was forthcoming from the new regime. In the summer of 1933, when the Maharani wished to import two cars (since her request for official cars had been turned down), she wrote to the Dewan asking for the courtesy certificates Indian princes enjoyed as a privilege so as not to pay custom duties. But she was told that this could only be given to the Maharajah or to ‘members of the family’ who ‘reside with and are dependant upon him’.93 She, in other words, would not be granted the courtesy certificate and would have to pay import duties. Indeed, only a matter of months after her ‘exiguous settlement’ was confirmed, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, who was in Ponmudi at the time, was compelled to write to the new Resident of the evolution of her nephew’s attitude towards her from ‘one of unkindness into one of determined and violent hostility’.94
Leaving aside the fact that not even the peons she was promised had been made available, the Senior Maharani wrote that she was facing ‘several deprivations, including privileges and honours’ enjoyed even before the Regency. Normally her permanent royal guard was stationed at her residence in the Fort, and whenever she was in camp elsewhere, fresh guards were provided. This was regular practice even in the time of the last Maharajah, but now she was told that she would have to make do with existing soldiers, and, moreover, pay for their transport from her own pocket.95 During her stay in Ponmudi, she received information that the guards at Satelmond Palace, including the police, were summarily withdrawn from duty. In addition to this, unprecedented expenses were being charged to her account; government servants deputed on duty with her were hitherto paid their travelling allowances from public funds, as was the medical officer who visited every day to check her. Now, however, their TA bills were being forwarded to her. Similarly, while in the past she received maintenance grants for all the buildings she controlled under the Sripadam on the Malayalam new year, she had not, since 1932 received any money. All of this was, she felt, ‘arbitrary and humiliating’, compelling her to engage in petty squabbles, ‘but perhaps’, she added with resignation, ‘it is late in the day for me to complain about humiliation’.96
If these were more official concerns, there were also growing quarrels of the domestic kind, which, due to the Maharajah’s attitude, she found exceedingly galling even as it was embarrassing for her to ask for the Resident’s intervention. One of these came up when the Maharani received a letter from Kowdiar Palace asking for the return of an old necklace she had in her possession. This was a present from Mulam Tirunal to her when she was a child, and she had been using it for over thirty years. Naturally, she protested the demand for its return to the current Maharajah, but was told that Chithira Tirunal himself desired to wear it, and she would have to surrender the item. Reluctantly, she forwarded the old ornament to Kowdiar Palace.97 But if this were not already an effort to hurt her feelings, soon afterwards Sethu Lakshmi Bayi received a second communication from the Maharajah’s office. One of the small rubies in the locket, it stated, was broken and an ‘enquiry’ had been, therefore, ordered.98 Moreover, the Maharani was instructed that henceforth, every six months, all the ornaments used by her and her two daughters were to be sent to Kowdiar Palace for ‘inspection’. ‘The stipulation’, a humiliated Sethu Lakshmi Bayi wrote, ‘can only be regarded as a ruse substitute for a direct demand for the return of all articles now with us since the impracticability of keeping them subject to the [new] condition is patent.’99 The damage to the ruby in a thirty-year-old necklace was made to seem as some kind of impropriety on the Maharani’s part, and with great indignation she returned all the jewels she and her children had in their possession. Decades later when the personal ornaments of the royal house, valued in 1924 as worth over Rs 10 lakh,100 were partitioned between the two branches of the family, the story goes that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s heirs arrived in Trivandrum and discovered that all that was left was a single pair of large, old earrings that belonged to the previous Rani.101
Other pretexts were also found by the new regime to blow out of proportion in order to insult the Maharani. At the commencement of the Regency, certain watches were found among Mulam Tirunal’s belongings. His staff had them brought to her for safekeeping, and for being regularly maintained and wound. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had all the pieces sent to the little Maharajah so he could select some for his own use, and the six that remained were kept in working order at Satelmond Palace. When she resigned power, she promptly had all of these forwarded to Kowdiar Palace so that Chithira Tirunal could use them if he wished.102 It then turned out that one of the watches was registered with the Chellamvakai, where all the royal family’s valuables, leaving aside private possessions, were maintained. When that particular watch was submitted to the treasurer at Satelmond Palace, the latter issued a receipt for it. Now it appeared that the description (as brief as it could be on a slip of paper) did not ‘match’ that of the watch despatched to Kowdiar Palace. The Maharajah’s secretary ordered the treasurer, then, to pay the full price of the piece, amounting to Rs 500, for evidently misplacing the original. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, upon inspection, however, was convinced it was the same watch that had been shown to her seven years before, and vouched for her employee. When Kowdiar Palace would not relent, she asked them to recover the price from her own account, hoping that this would be the last she heard on the sub
ject.
But no. The Palace office is apparently afraid to let the matter rest there, since to do so would deprive it of a handle for further bullying me, a view supported by the unnecessarily indignant language used in the letter sent after the recovery of the price of the missing watch [from her account] compared with the even tone of the previous ones.103
This last letter was one stating that another inquiry would be constituted, even though the money had been paid in full, ‘as a check against a repetition of similar mistakes in future’.104 Once again, the tone of the letter suggested the Maharani was somehow personally responsible for allegedly mislaying the watch and needed to be disciplined for this error. As usual, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi put up with the insult, hoping that ultimately the Kowdiar Palace would run out of reasons to treat her in such a bizarre, vindictive manner. But while she patiently bore these insults, there was one personal issue that was contentious, where the Maharani proved highly unwilling to comply with orders from the Maharajah.
Early in 1932 correspondence commenced on the subject of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, Rama Varma and their two daughters paying courtesy calls to the Maharajah on, as his secretary informed them, the first and fifteenth day of every Malayalam month.105 The Maharani agreed to the suggestion but pointed out that with regard to herself and the Maharajah, the precedent of the late Rani Lakshmi Bayi and Mulam Tirunal should be followed. This was because, as in the present case, the Maharajah then was also younger than the Rani and it was he who called on her and she ‘only rarely went to call on the Maharajah herself ’, as she was head of the royal house, giving her premier rank in the dynasty.106 Nothing was heard about visits due to the Maharani from the Maharajah but the princesses were sent accompanied by their father to Kowdiar Palace on one occasion. But at that time the Valiya Koil Tampuran was asked to wait outside while the Maharajah met the girls in private.107
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