In addition to this, indications were made of alarming financial discrepancies going back decades in the accounts of the temple. ‘The temple authorities and the Auditors have failed the minimal standards of financial transparency, and the Amicus does fear that the land and buildings of the temple have been illegally sold and leased.’ There was a ‘complete lack of inventory’ with regard to gold and silver offerings given to the temple for thirty years and he felt that ‘financial malfeasance is writ large in the temple’. In much of this, Mr Subramanium held the state as an active supporter of the royal family. It appeared to him that the dominance of the family had ‘compelled the State to fall in line’ and he found ‘it incredible that in a free republican country, the State and its officials actually recognise such exceptional “royal” presence’. The kind of status Kowdiar Palace enjoyed seemed to reveal to the amicus curiae a ‘parallelism based on monarchic rule’ that could ‘predominate the social psyche’. And the royal family, ‘riding on the crest of past reputations’, enjoyed numerous resultant perks.15
Mr Subramanium then recommended that the Supreme Court issue ‘an injunction restraining the present trustee [i.e., the current head of the royal house] and his family members from either directly or indirectly interfering with day to day management of the Temple.’ It did not help the cause of Kowdiar Palace that two of its own members seemed to side with the amicus curiae. The late Elayarajah’s son ‘disclosed how [a] coterie of staff members who had royal support defeated any good initiative’ in the temple, while the Junior Maharani’s only great granddaughter ‘wept and wept seeking forgiveness for her family before God’. Her relations, however, objected to the report submitted by Mr Subramanium, with their counsel calling it ‘an attempt to defame, dishonour, and discredit the family and to dissociate them from the administration of the age old temple forever’.16 The Supreme Court, nevertheless, for the time being at any rate, asked Kowdiar Palace to withdraw from involvement in the management of the shrine.
For the first time since 1931, the Junior Maharani’s family had lost control over what is today recognised as the world’s wealthiest temple. And this is where matters rest at present.
Kowdiar Palace, with its 150 rooms and imposing façade, still commands respect as a structure of great architectural elegance in Thiruvananthapuram. But its majesty has dulled considerably in recent years; its walls beg for a coat of plaster and paint, its acres and acres of gardens are overrun with weeds, while paintings and objets d’art collected by the Junior Maharani from around the world gather dust. The whole place, creaking and crumbling, stands in wistful, stately dilapidation. Its principal residents today are the two granddaughters of the Junior Maharani; her grandson is now the head of the family following the Elayarajah’s death in 2013, and spends much of his time in Mangalore attending to business concerns. Of great grandsons, one lives in the palace with his twin daughters, while another is based in Chennai. The third is an itinerant musician. The Junior Maharani’s great granddaughter is her only heir in the female line. A spirited woman in her early fifties now, she caused a minor scandal by marrying a Nair journalist and electing not to have children. Today she lives in a private house of her own, and with her the line of Sethu Parvathi Bayi will terminate.
In the mid-1990s, while the Junior Maharani’s daughter, the First Princess, and the Elayarajah were still alive, Kowdiar Palace adopted a relative from the Kolathiri line in Mavelikkara. The event attracted significant attention in the press for its quaint romance, and in an interview the adoptee, a Home Science graduate, assured readers that she remained perfectly normal, though Sanskrit lessons and classical music had been added to her routine. ‘We cannot stop temple customs which we are required to perform,’ the Junior Maharani’s elder granddaughter explained, ‘and an heiress is a must for these duties.’17 As her sister would write with somewhat excessive devotional and dynastic superlatives:
Since there was no girl for the continuation of Maharani Sethu Parvathi Bayi’s branch of the Travancore royal family from which Maharajah Chithira Tirunal hailed, history repeated itself, so that this branch would continue to be blessed with the supreme honour and joy of serving Sree Padmanabha Swamy in the succeeding unnumbered ages. A kshatriya girl from … Mavelikkara was adopted and [due ceremonies were] performed in the presence of [assorted religious dignitaries, family] and guests. Bharani Tirunal Lekha Parvathi Bayi thus became the new member of this branch.18
While the case in the Supreme Court has possibly impaired the optimism with regard to ‘unnumbered ages’ of prospective temple command, for close to a decade after her adoption, Lekha Parvathi Bayi’s name featured every now and then in the press. But suddenly, she disappeared from such association with Kowdiar Palace. Her fate is not entirely clear: some claim that the High Court of Kerala in a judgment related to the temple annulled the adoption, while others point out that she, it was realised later, was too old at the time of adoption, due to which it had to be cancelled. Either way, Lekha Parvathi Bayi, who married and produced a child in 2000, disappeared from the scene just as unexpectedly as she had appeared.
Notwithstanding the antiquated spectacle of royal adoptions in democratic India, the introduction of Lekha Parvathi Bayi was not, in fact, entirely traditional. Adoptions were, in the old days, resorted to when there were no female members in the dynasty or when existing female heirs entertained no prospects of issue.19 In the 1990s, while Kowdiar Palace was on the brink of extinction after its sole great granddaughter opted out of the business of succession, the branch of the Senior Maharani in Bangalore had a healthy supply of women to fill the ranks of the Attingal line. But possibly because of the traditional animosity between the two houses, or due to the lack of interest that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s family evinces in Thiruvananthapuram, they were discounted.
To those in the city who still remember the Senior Maharani and are aware that she has descendants, the ‘Bangalore royals’ appear extremely anglicised. Kowdiar Palace, in that sense, has retained its traditional flavour; every other festive occasion sees members of the Junior Maharani’s family feature on Malayalam television, discussing the way things were or matters of culture and royal heritage. In the press most reviews gush homilies, normally about their devotion to Padmanabhaswamy or about their simplicity and asceticism. Much of this curiosity for the royal family revolves around the Junior Maharani’s granddaughters and their pronouncements that indicate extreme piety. When asked about a book the younger sister authored, she replied, ‘I cannot say I have written the book, I have been allowed to write by Him.’ Similarly, ‘Adoration of Lord Padmanabha permeates everything the family does. From the time we remember, we grew up with His name.’20 ‘Travancore: Simplicity graces this House’, went the title of a fulsome press feature in The Hindu in 2003; and a decade later in 2013 another headline in the same paper wasn’t particularly refreshing when it said: ‘Simplicity hallmark of Travancore royal family.’21 A typical press review of the family, as for instance in the Economic Times, goes:
As Sree Padmanabha Swamy temple’s glittering gems are valued and tagged, it’s not just the diamonds that shine but also the royal family of the erstwhile princely state of Travancore. It’s an ode to the family’s unflinching devotion and integrity that not a penny has gone missing from the billions stored in the cellars of the centuries-old shrine administered by the royals …What makes the family’s story vis-à-vis the temple all the more compelling is that the rulers always knew of the riches, yet never touched them … Observers talk of the symbolic significance of the practice of royal family members dusting sand off their feet when they emerge from the shrine. ‘It was meant to convey that the family members would not take home or misappropriate even a speck of sand belonging to Padmanabha,’ they say.22
Even the formidable amicus curiae at first appeared to have been in great awe of the family and the deifying halo around it. ‘It may also be clarified,’ he noted in his preliminary report, ‘that the Royal family does not want
anything from the Temple’s riches for itself. Consistent with tradition, the relationship of the Royal family with the Temple is unique because for them Lord Padmnabha Swamy and the Temple is their “life force”. While certain errors,’ he added, somewhat uncritically, ‘on account of miscommunication or incorrect presentation before the members of the Royal family may have led to certain problems … it is necessary that the Royal family is associated with the administration of the temple in order to ensure that the Temple is restored at the earliest. In fact, His Highness [sic] Sri Martanda Varma [i.e., the late Elayarajah, then still alive] of the erstwhile State of Travancore visits the Temple daily even at the grand old age of 90 … The Royal family is also held in high repute especially by the members of the general public and the State Government.’23
To Mr Subramanium, in his first stint in Thiruvananthapuram, the Junior Maharani’s younger granddaughter, whom he addressed as a Princess, was ‘an embodiment of knowledge about the history of the Temple and for whom the Temple is her life’s mainstay’. He then expressed admiration of the fact that the Elayarajah could speak Sanskrit, and that another member of the family was a trained classical musician. But after another year in Thiruvananthapuram to investigate temple affairs, the amicus curiae appears to have swiftly distanced his personal respect for the private qualities of the Junior Maharani’s heirs from the judicial matter of the family’s competence in running the temple. And in this position, his criticism proved devastating to the image Kowdiar Palace had sustained for so many decades in the eyes of the public. A high-profile audit did further damage when it reported to the Supreme Court that as much as 266 kilograms of gold were missing from the temple. And for all those claims that opening the ‘serpent’ vault would unleash horrendous calamity, since 1990 and under the management of the late Elayarajah, this very kallara had been entered at least seven times.24
Naturally, many began to murmur about this discrepancy between the general picture of devotion that envelops the royal family and the increasingly worrying information emerging from court-appointed observers of the reality of the temple’s management. The Junior Maharani’s family appear to be genuinely pained by these revelations and the attendant beating their reputation has taken. ‘This is the saddest moment in their lives and the worst humiliation the family has to endure,’ their plea in the Supreme Court read, ‘as a result of the unjustified attack on their intense devotion to the Lord and time tested integrity.’25 In an interview to the Financial Times, the Junior Maharani’s granddaughter asserted that the family had no desire to appropriate the temple’s wealth. ‘We have no claim even to one little coin within the temple. We are saying it all belongs to the deity and to him only. We are not fighting to gain control of the riches—not at all. We want our good name vindicated. This is our life. It’s not about possessions. We are fighting for our life.’26
The future of Sethu Parvathi Bayi’s heirless line, ensconced in the decaying Kowdiar Palace, and battling for authority over the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, that final and only vestige of royal glory, rests now in the hands of the Supreme Court of India.
Tucked away on Bangalore’s teeming Richmond Road, Lalitha and Kerala Varma’s house today survives as one of the city’s last-standing colonial bungalows. Obscured from traffic on the street by a series of erratic constructions, this is a place of nostalgic, somewhat gloomy darkness. Most of the garden, which Kerala Varma tended to in the good old days, has been relinquished to shopping malls, blocks of apartments, and other commercial buildings that tower over the edifice. But like Kowdiar Palace, despite its loss of outwardly grandeur, inside it retains a quaint charm. Its wooden ceilings creak under the weight of ancient chandeliers, dusted occasionally when a man with a tall ladder can be found for hire. Its verandahs, with intricately patterned Italian tiles, open into rooms that have more ‘modern’ mosaic floors. Furniture is scattered in neglected heaps around the house. Portraits of glorious ancestors hang on the walls, resigned to their fate behind discoloured frames. A handsome grandfather clock stands imperiously in a corner, while books in the study gather dust in cabinets that have not been opened in a decade.
There is to the place, even as it crumbles irreparably, an antique dignity, just as there is something picturesque about the lives of its current occupants. Lalitha died in 2008 but Kerala Varma, now nearly a hundred years old, shuffles about dutifully every day around the place ‘to keep an eye on things’. And his companion is his eldest daughter Rukmini, now seventy-five. She is the other resident of No 8 Richmond Road. And for all her dynamism and glamour in the 1960s and ’70s, she has not been seen in society now for twenty-five years. Rukmini divides her time today between tortuous prayers—in penance for what she calls her accumulated failures and mistakes—and painting. Every morning her father’s attendants put together two teapoys, mount two stools on those teapoys, and hoist a stately armchair to the top so that Rukmini can add a fresh coat of paint to the massive, gigantic mythological canvases she works on.
To those who know in Thiruvananthapuram, Sethu Parvathi Bayi won that historic twentieth-century battle between the two Maharanis of Travancore. After all, her heirs still reside in a grand old palace in Kerala, enjoying public reverence, though recent events have unexpectedly dulled the lustre of their name. On the other hand, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s heirs haven’t left a place to call home in the land their ancestors ruled. Nobody remembers them, and those who know faintly of the Senior Maharani are dying. The veneration devout royalists feel towards the last Maharajah to this day means that the story of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi is never told, and her name is only taken in whispers. To the devout, Chithira Tirunal was god-incarnate because of his love for his family deity. The history with his aunt, however, reveals that even earthly gods have their share of prejudices and are, ultimately, human. Besides, they argue, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi left years ago. And since she chose to renounce her royal heritage, her obscurity is her fate.
While Kowdiar Palace battles today to protect its reputation (and arguably to hold on to the eroding relevance it still enjoys in Thiruvananthapuram courtesy the temple), the heirs of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi watch with distant curiosity what unfolds in their old family capital. They have had to fight their own battles, though these were somewhat more personal in nature. The greatest tragedy in this side of the dynasty lies in Rukmini’s story. The Maharani’s favourite, praised for her beauty and talent and lavished upon with presents and fortune, is today a reclusive shadow of the woman she was once. And her life began to unravel a little after the demise of her protective, doting grandmother.
In 1988, Rukmini’s youngest son, Ranjith, died in Bangalore in an accident. He was only twenty years old, and his mother never recovered from the shock. Since then she has shunned attention, locking herself up quite literally in a punishing routine of hours and hours of prayers and rituals. She gave away all her expensive goods to family and relations, dressing in tattered old mundus thereafter. As her renunciation of the good life became almost an obsession, she separated from her husband. The woman who was once so pampered that she couldn’t cross a road without someone to hold her hand, now left the house only for pilgrimages to temples, travelling in buses full of oblivious strangers. She sold the ‘palace on Richmond Road’, that mansion her grandmother had presented her; today, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s final abode hosts an unremarkable apartment building. The Maharani’s granddaughter divided all her money and even furniture between Venu and Jay. For some time she lived alone in a gloomy flat with her only remaining property: her dead son’s motorbike. Then one day Lalitha rose to the occasion and decided she would not let Rukmini descend from grief into madness. She went to her and brought her to her father’s house. And since then Rukmini has resided there, having also made a promise to her dying mother that she would not leave while Kerala Varma lived.
The death of Rukmini’s son was the first big tragedy in what was until then a life of great bliss for Lalitha ever since she relinquished the scheming world of palaces
and princes. As she remarked after the accident in 1988: ‘In all these years I have been very happy. But for the first time now I have known sorrow.’27
Adversity came to Indira also in Chennai. Much money was lost in ill-fated business ventures and to incompetent managers. Having moved from her imposing house on Nungambakkam High Road, she lives in a much smaller, somewhat depressing place in Neelankarai. There is more than great affluence even today—at least eight or nine members of staff run Indira’s household. A fleet of cars is permanently parked outside, awaiting their mistress who never leaves. Indira spends most of her time in bed. But the greatest loss she suffered was also personal, when in 2001 Shobhana’s only child died, plunging her into a grief from which she too has still not recovered. As she wrote at the time:
Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh,
Beat of my pulse, song of my heart,
Did I love you too much dear one?
Did jealous fate resent the gift,
Of so much love to a single soul,
And take you, leaving me bereft?28
But these two scarring episodes aside, the Senior Maharani’s successors state that they are happy, and do not mind their obscurity in the eyes of their former subjects in old Travancore. As Uma explains: ‘Every now and then we discuss how we should not have given up all our properties in Kerala, how maybe we should have fought the government for at least some of them, how we should have done some things differently. But would I go back to the palace and to that life? Never!’ It is, to the outsider, difficult to believe that there is no sense of regret at having given up the glories of heritage, but Uma is determined in her position. ‘You have to remember,’ she explains, ‘that it is because mother came away from all that, and because grandmother made her great sacrifice that the younger ones in our family today are so successful and leading good lives. If we had continued in the palace, living in some wishful cocoon about being “royalty” while the world around us changed, we would have done a great disservice to these children. They would belong neither in the past nor in the present.’29
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