Eventually, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi herself had to travel to Mavelikkara with her husband to soothe Mahaprabha, whose dreams and ambitions for her daughter had come crashing down all of a sudden, terminating her own hitherto uncontested reign in Mavelikkara as a kind of grand matriarch feared by one and all. The trip was ostensibly a general tour, so as not to upset the Maharajah, but the Senior Rani was able to spend good time with her mother before returning to the capital. It surprised many that Mahaprabha, who always seemed so undaunted and formidable, suddenly suffered such a defeatist blow, and to the Senior Rani’s father and husband it seemed clear that for all her quietness, it was Sethu Lakshmi Bayi who possessed a stronger inner resolve. After taking over the Sripadam especially, it became obvious that while she might have failed the state and the Maharajah in producing heirs, she intended to do good with the responsibility and power entrusted to her in her position as queen.
But barely had a month passed since her assumption of control over the estate when a vexatious dispute began with the Junior Rani, now comfortably settled in her new palace. Typically, the latter ought to have stayed in their common establishment under the Senior Rani’s control, and the move away from their joint palace buildings led to confusion about how her affairs were to be managed. The Junior Rani’s son had a manager appointed for him, who forwarded to Sripadam bills for her expenses, which Sethu Lakshmi Bayi felt she was not obliged to reimburse, given that her cousin had moved out and was accumulating extraordinary costs. The Junior Rani also desired an increase in her monthly allowance, which also the Senior Rani saw no justification to grant, especially in the face of all the acrimony. As the dispute became serious, Rama Varma wrote to his father-in-law, ‘Sripadam affairs now bristle with difficulties.’104 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi gave vent to her feelings in a series of letters, most of which are now lost. ‘I am not writing in every letter that it should be destroyed,’ she cryptically notes in one, hoping that her father would ‘destroy those that should be destroyed’ to avoid their falling into the wrong hands.105 To her mother she wrote, providing a glimpse into the state of affairs in the palace, as follows:
It is difficult to write everything that has been happening here. It can only be communicated orally. I hope you can guess the kind of atmosphere here. Though I sometimes long to have you here, on second thought, I think that it is better you are not here now. If you were here, you too would have worried about it, but nothing would have been solved. There is a difference in hearing about it and actually experiencing it. I do not know how long it will take for some settlement to be arrived at. Apart from waiting patiently there is nothing I can do about it.106
Traditionally, with the Junior Rani living in the Senior Rani’s establishment, she was only entitled to a personal allowance from the Sripadam. In the old days this was determined at the pleasure of the Senior Rani, but in 1876, in the days of Ayilyam Tirunal, the allowance was fixed at Rs 8,400 per annum.107 Taking this intervention as a precedent, on 10 February 1914, Mulam Tirunal stepped into the dispute and held that Sethu Parvathi Bayi could now have Rs 12,000 from the Sripadam per annum, with Rs 48,000 allotted for general expenses, and Rs 30,000 settled on the Senior Rani for her own personal needs.108 In the interests of peace, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi accepted this mediation, even though she was certain that there would still be cause for complaints. The whole of 1914 then passed with uncertain relations between the two palaces, until there were some unusual events that came about unexpectedly. In April that year the Junior Rani felt urged to explain her behaviour to Mahaprabha and conducted a long conversation ‘justifying her conduct and procedure’ over recent events.109 Then, while the Senior Rani was still not encouraged to get too close to the little Elayarajah, on a few rare occasions Kochukunji herself ventured to bring him to Moonbeam to see her. ‘He does not look like he has grown very much since I last saw him,’ Sethu Lakshmi Bayi noted after one meeting, also adding that ‘5 or 6 big teeth have come out’.110 But none of these efforts led to a real reconciliation and the divide continued to widen drastically between the cousins and their two mothers.
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi, however, would remember the year not because of all her family difficulties, but because of a tragedy that would take her several years to come to terms with. This was the unexpected death of the Valiya Koil Tampuran on 22 September. Kerala Varma had a personal custom every year of visiting the Mahadeva Temple in Vaikom in north Travancore, and in 1914 too he bid his usual adieus to the Senior Rani and her husband before leaving. At Vaikom he went through his routine of prayers and made offerings to the deity, before going down to Harippad to spend time with his family, including with Rama Varma’s sisters: Amba, Ambika and Ambalika. Then, on the morning of 20 September, having breakfasted with his relatives at the family home, the Valiya Koil Tampuran started by car for the capital with Prof. A.R. Rajaraja Varma, his nephew and a distinguished Sanskrit grammarian. The two men were deeply engrossed in conversation as the car approached the outskirts of the town of Kayamkulam where an accident occurred suddenly.
State cars of the Maharajah in those days were rather lightly built, with broad sideboards where it was customary for uniformed escorts to stand as flanks even when the vehicle was in motion. As the Valiya Koil Tampuran reached Kayamkulam, a stray dog jumped on to the road and one of the men attempted to scare it away by kicking at the animal. This sudden movement gave the whole car a heavy jolt so much so that the vehicle skidded off the road into a ditch, injuring everyone in and on it. Kerala Varma, who was just a year short of completing seventy years and already in poor health, was badly injured and languished by the roadside for some time before a palanquin arrived and carried him to Mavelikkara for medical assistance. Whatever could be hastily arranged in terms of good-quality treatment was provided, but it was in vain; two days later the Valiya Koil Tampuran succumbed to his injuries. Writing a remembrance to the man, the master poet Kumaran Asan lamented:
We do not think that in Kerala there is any great man other than Kerala Varma whom all Malayalis, irrespective of caste or creed, love and respect with so much sincerity, and remember with so much gratitude. When will it be possible for us to see again a combination like this of qualities such as scholarship, poetic talents, goodness, generosity, family prestige and character of the highest standard? O! Land of Kerala, thy light has gone! Thou art engulfed in darkness!111
Whether or not Kerala was engulfed in darkness, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi most certainly was. She had always been the Valiya Koil Tampuran’s pet and he had stood by her when issues arose with the Junior Rani recently, acting as her spokesperson to represent her views at the Maharajah’s palace also. He had shared her sadness at her inability to give birth to a child and the consequent humiliation it had brought for her and her family. It was an injustice, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi felt, that she could not even have a look at his body before it was cremated, for as usual she was prohibited by royal decorum from going to Mavelikkara for that purpose; for all his years at court and as practically a member of the royal house, he was still not formally royal and would, inevitably, be treated as a mere consort on his death. But like before, she steeled herself together and accepted that this was how things were and she would have to live with it.
By 1914, at only nineteen, the Senior Rani had grown up and matured, both due to her natural tendency towards seriousness and also because of the circumstances she was enveloped in. Her mother’s health was becoming precarious, her guardian had passed away, relations with the Junior Rani were a disaster beneath that veneer of politeness, problems were starting to arise with the Maharajah, and then in December it was also ordered that Miss Watts, whose company and friendship she looked at as a huge relief from everyday palace politics, was to have her services terminated at the Maharajah’s orders, who felt that the Senior Rani no longer needed formal instruction. ‘I see Madam often when I go out for drives,’ she wrote dejectedly to her mother. ‘Though she does not read with me, I get the opportunity to get books and discuss them with her. N
ow that I get books to read, you need not worry about how I spend my spare time.’112 It was not an easy spell for the Senior Rani and books, as usual, became her escape from the troubles of the world. But for all that, she was really quite alone.
4
The Second Favourite
‘Nowadays letters from the Palace are becoming rare,’ Sethu Lakshmi Bayi ruminated in a note to her father in July 1915, pondering over recent convulsions that had left a deteriorating impact upon her relations with the Maharajah.1 Ostensibly it was those grating quarrels with the Junior Rani that provoked his disgruntlement. However, Mulam Tirunal’s annoyance really had other more sinister authors, lurking in the obscure shadows of his sequestered palace. The Maharajah, to be certain, was most displeased with the Senior Rani’s childlessness; he had made it unambiguously clear from the onset that he viewed her adoption from the ‘purely political standpoint’ of procuring heirs.2 Without those heirs, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s position at court was precarious. While she was a child, the Maharajah is believed to have been very fond of her; every fortnight she would be heralded with the Junior Rani for an audience, and if the children impressed Mulam Tirunal, special presents would arrive for them at Sundara Vilasam. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi seems to have earned particular favour for her prodigious intelligence, and once, for instance, riotous excitement was caused when an enormous emerald arrived as a token of the Maharajah’s appreciation.3 By 1915, however, the Senior Rani’s attitude presented a problem to Mulam Tirunal and his unofficial advisers, who perceived her as disrespectful of his kingly authority. Rama Varma too was unflatteringly singled out and held as a contemptuous upstart of mediocre talent, bent upon swaying his wife’s better judgement, a charge that would constantly be made against him into the future as well.
While Mulam Tirunal was certainly aggravated by these considerations, the nefarious influence of what has been called the ‘palace bureau’ contributed explicitly towards perpetuating the growing differences in the royal household. Much of this had to do with the Maharajah’s own muted personality. Born in 1857, Mulam Tirunal was left an orphan when his mother died eleven days after his birth and his father before his third birthday. His uncles brought him up, alongside an imbecile brother, but despite the affection lavished on him, there was no tangible compensation for the deficiency of parental and, especially, maternal warmth. By the time he was in his early adolescence, his uncles, Ayilyam Tirunal and Visakham Tirunal, could not see eye to eye, and the then Ranis were also a ‘source of ceaseless trouble’ with their numerous squabbles and domestic difficulties.4 The royal family was, in every way, an unhappy backdrop while Mulam Tirunal grew into manhood. Despite the incessant internecine feuds around him, however, the young prince was a diligent student who minded his business, once causing Ayilyam Tirunal to openly remark that he was ‘the one member of the royal family that causes me no trouble.’5 The Resident too saw in him great promise. ‘He is fond of European society,’ it was noted, ‘dances quadrilles and such-like dances with European ladies, and joins in lawn tennis … He is decidedly intelligent and possesses very good commonsense. In my opinion, he is likely to prove an excellent ruler.’6
The favour he enjoyed with the Maharajah and his consort, Kalyani Pillai, led in 1879 to Mulam Tirunal’s marriage with their adopted daughter, Ananthalakshmi. But prospects of conjugal happiness were also denied him when death snatched her away in 1882, leaving Mulam Tirunal deserted again.7 ‘The loss is an irreparable one,’ he wrote to Kerala Varma at that time, ‘and it is more than I could bear with all my fortitude.’8 These accumulated unhappy experiences, despite his best efforts, went a long way in moulding the man’s character, even as he became increasingly dedicated to his family deity and largely preoccupied with affairs of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple where he found welcome solace.
Three years later in 1885 he ascended the throne after the death of Visakham Tirunal, and his reign was decidedly remarkable, standing out as one of the best in the history of Travancore. For instance, in 1885 the government’s spending on education was Rs 1,80,437 per annum, which by 1915 rose to a signally inspiring Rs 15,69,239. Similarly, the public works allotment, practically unheard of in other principalities where state exchequers were treated as personal reserves by parochial rulers, rose from Rs 9,37,118 to Rs 23,92,172 during the same period; and other departments of the administration also witnessed impressive developments.9 The total revenue of Travancore, which was Rs 66 ½ lakhs with Rs 2 crore worth of trade when Mulam Tirunal came to power, rose to Rs 150 lakh and Rs 6 ¼ crore respectively by 1915.10 It is also laudable that even as the prosperity of the state grew so significantly, the spending of the royal family itself increased only by a very marginal fraction, from Rs 7,57,650 in 1885 to Rs 8,12,564 in 1915.11 Thus, Mulam Tirunal was successful in maintaining the reformist administration established by his visionary uncles, retaining for Travancore the coveted title of ‘Model State of India’ that the British lavished upon it among all its other princely competitors.
But alongside the revenues of the state, there also rose at the centre of power a noxious amount of corruption and vulgar self-seeking, all under the Maharajah’s nose, patently inconsistent with his good record as an administrator. The situation was not at all unprecedented. Ayilyam Tirunal, for instance, despite his praiseworthy efforts to bring up the state to modern Western standards, was notorious as ‘a moral wreck and a sexual pervert’.12 He also employed a large number of henchmen who were above the law and would become forerunners of a budding ‘palace bureau’ that was beyond the jurisdiction of the government. The bureau itself would come to its fullest fruition during Mulam Tirunal’s reign, turning Travancore, as an observer notes, into ‘a land of scandals’ despite impressive statistics.13 ‘It must be admitted,’ the Resident wrote in a confidential note in 1908, ‘that the Maharajah is weak.’ He was quite ‘sincerely desirous of ruling well’ but ‘the backdoor influence of the palace favourites appears to dominate everything’.14 Within twenty years of his reign, thus, the original enterprise and enthusiasm that had marked his government’s enlightened rule was conspicuously receding, as was Mulam Tirunal’s interest in anything other than his ceremonial and religious duties. ‘I fancy that he is growing more reserved and shrinks from appearing in public,’ recorded the Resident,15 who relentlessly deplored that ‘sinister influence behind the curtain, which colours all his actions and perverts his best resolutions’.16
By this time the number of favourites had shrunk and two prominent individuals had developed rival clout in the palace. Until the turn of the twentieth century, the real force behind Mulam Tirunal was a Brahmin, Anantha Rama Iyer, better known as Saravanai or Fouzdarswamy. Described by one British emissary as ‘the ICB (illiterate cook boy)’, this son of the Maharajah’s wet nurse possessed such influence over the ruler that ‘the impression of the natives is that he has bewitched the Maharajah’.17 The contemporary student activist, G.P. Pillai, was more scathing in his review of conditions in the palace:
Soon after His Highness’ accession, he raised a low illiterate menial of his … who began life on a Rupee-and-a-half per mensem to the place of Palace Manager and subsequently Fouzdar Commissioner, on a salary of Rs 500 a month … Ever since, the influence of this royal favourite has been paramount in the State. The Maharajah is a pliant tool in [his] hands, and like a marionette is being tossed about by his favourite for purposes of self-gratification. In the presence of the Fouzdar [i.e., Saravanai who was given this hollow office with high pay],18 the mind of the Maharajah is blank and his arms are powerless. He is so completely enslaved that his very existence is intertwined with that of his favourite. In domestic as well as State matters, he is led by the nose of his eccentric adherent who always plays the Sir Oracle. The payment of bribes to him or a slavish obedience of his orders is the only road to preferment and promotion [in the official services].19
There is some political exaggeration in this account, for G.P. was something of a radical, but a further allegat
ion by him that the palace bureau was responsible for Mulam Tirunal’s prolonged singlehood in order to retain their control over him is interesting. Newspapers like the Madras Standard had already censured Saravanai for acting as the Maharajah’s procurer of women,20 and when a marriage proposal once came about, it was thwarted because the lady refused to toe the favourite’s line.21 The Maharajah, in the meantime, was recorded to ‘brighten up at best upon ceremonial occasions but often lapses into a dreamy stupor’, as if really under a wicked spell of some kind.22
Incidentally, Saravanai’s fall from favour did indeed occur only after Mulam Tirunal took a second wife and new characters were introduced into this devious political saga. Sometime in the 1890s the Maharajah made his acquaintance with a certain lady known as Kartyayani Pillai. She belonged to an ordinary family in the capital but her father served as a retainer to that grand dame, Kalyani Pillai, the adoptive mother of Mulam Tirunal’s first wife.23 It is believed that it was she who, as the Maharajah’s mother-in-law, suggested he take Kartyayani as his wife instead of continuing to trudge through his days as an unhappy widower. The latter dutifully obliged, the story goes, and in 1896 a son was born to them.24 However, it was only in 1899 that the Maharajah formally ‘espoused’ the lady and conferred aristocracy upon her, declaring her his official consort.25 In 1901 a daughter was born and it appeared as though Mulam Tirunal’s family life was perfectly restored, and joyful days were in the offing.26
But if a new wife and children were expected to wean the Maharajah away strategically from the hateful influences in his palace, they succeeded only partially. Kartyayani Pillai seems to have enjoyed her sudden ennoblement into royal society, learning some Sanskrit and even ‘a few polite English phrases’ to fit in. ‘She has a light complexion, and is short and very stout,’ a newspaper profile in London chronicled, possessed of ‘an excess of adipose tissue’, which was seen as ‘a sign of prosperity’. ‘The ruler’s wife, no doubt,’ it somewhat mockingly concludes, ‘is lucky as few women are, and she has therefore every incentive to be as fat as Nature may let her grow.’27 But while the Ammachi inflated in bodily proportions, conditions in the palace only deteriorated, with the influence of Saravanai, as the First Favourite, being supplanted by that of a fresh entrant who was destined for even greater notoriety as the Second Favourite.
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