But the Maharani’s long stay was not merely for reasons of leisure. A second marriage had been proposed for Indira with a suitable boy of the Kilimanoor family. She had dissolved into her intermediate studies after Kuttan’s death and though she did not speak very much, she finally consented to marrying again. The groom’s name was also Kerala Varma, though he was better known as KK. A qualified lawyer, he was actually two years junior to Indira, but what perhaps the more orthodox might have deemed a major disqualification was the fact that he was something of a patriotic radical. Their son would later tell: ‘Father was a nationalist and an ardent admirer of Subhash Chandra Bose and his particular brand of nationalism. In fact, when I was born, he even wanted to name me after Bose, but my mother put her foot down. Ironically, when he was a student in college, he had once taken down a portrait of my grandmother from a wall and replaced it with one of Bose! Little did he realise then that he was destined to one day marry that very Maharani’s daughter and right into the royal family he thought had seen its day!’75
The wedding in May 1952 was a quiet affair, again breaking tradition with its venue at Lalitha’s house in Bangalore. ‘None of the seven-day weddings like before,’ remarks Rukmini. ‘In fact, leaving aside the priests and others in the main hall performing all the religious ceremonies, it was quite westernised. I remember we had this massive, tall white wedding cake that all of us couldn’t wait to dig into! Aunt herself was all dressed in white, and with how pretty she naturally was, she looked radiant. But the most hilarious part was when the homam was going on. The priest, one Kuttappa Sastrigal, was this tiny little man and he was going around the fire chanting mantras, when suddenly his dhoti fell off! We were all in splits, but he quickly pulled it up and proceeded like nothing had happened.’76 Later that year, the Maharani purchased a house for Indira on Nungambakkam High Road in Madras. ‘I would have continued to live in the palace,’ Indira tells, ‘but once my sister left there was this idea that I too could lead a life of my own. So my husband and I came away from the palace. At first we toyed with the idea of going to Hyderabad but then settled on Madras.’77
While Indira continued her higher studies, KK, who was an alumnus of the Presidency College and had an MA in Hindi (acquired in pursuit of his nationalism), practised as a lawyer in the Madras High Court for some years, before venturing into business. In 1963, he would set up what became an iconic company in the city called India Meters. ‘It was the big company in Madras till the Birlas started Cimmco some years later.’78 By 1974, however, India Meters, started with a paid-up capital of Rs 74 lakh, would suffer substantial losses, and KK would relinquish his investment in it. As Rukmini now laughs, ‘I think both father and uncle were very unlucky in business, trusting the wrong people. None of that generation, which had only just moved away from the palace, really had a good business mentality, and the tendency was to give money to others.’ Nobody thought in terms of profit and loss and there was a great deal of generosity others exploited. And because there was more money where it came from, mistakes were often repeated by the husbands who suddenly had all their doting wives’ inheritance at their disposal. ‘They made their employees very happy, but in the long run their businesses suffered. Some of the younger children in our family are doing well now, but if we were told to do business, we’d have been resounding flops as well!’79
Into the early 1970s, KK would venture into the hotel industry. As one journal from the time put it, Hotel Ganpat was Madras’s first ‘posh Luxury Hotel in the heart of the city’ with an investment of Rs 60 lakh.80 ‘It was,’ his son tells, ‘one of the most popular hotels and had some very good restaurants, patronised by film stars and politicians and the who’s who of Madras. Then when the Taj came up on the same road, father thought, “Had it!” But it remained very popular for many more years. Again, it was some bad business decisions and a tendency to believe in the wrong people that ended father’s association with the hotel.’81 When Lalitha and her family from Bangalore visited Madras, they loved going to Ganpat for buffet lunches. ‘Uncle was always happy to indulge us and the food kept coming and coming, and often some of the staff would point out a Tamil movie star or an important dignitary dining near us. Uncle knew everyone there was to know in Madras.’82 The Valiya Koil Tampuran was the only one who felt his sons-in-law ought to stay out of business if they were not good at it. ‘He never gave a penny of his own money,’ tells Rukmini, ‘and he died a very rich man [with a personal estate valued at some Rs 62 lakh]. It was all grandmother’s wealth, which she had carefully saved during the Regency, that funded our ill-fated forays into business!’83
Indira’s life in Madras, however, was vastly different from Lalitha’s. She went out to play tennis with Mary Clubwala at the Ladies’ Recreation Club and attended meetings of the Literary Society, but remained, for most part, ‘painfully shy’.84 On some occasions, as the wife of a leading industrialist, she would be invited to appear as the chief guest at the Filmfare Awards, for instance, with personalities like Kamala Das, otherwise leading a private life. ‘We didn’t understand the royal past very much either,’ her son tells, ‘because it had all changed by then. Besides, we were known as the children of the owner of Hotel Ganpat or India Meters, not as members of the Travancore royal family. Now in hindsight, of course, I can understand we were different from other children. Where they walked to school, we used to go in a car. Small things like that. After my MA when I worked as a journalist in Bombay, I got used to living in small, crammy apartments. And one day I came home and sat in our drawing room and thought to myself how many people could fit into that one room alone. It offered perspective but we were not spoilt to begin with. We did not lead excessively affluent lives, and there were other “commoners” who were wealthier than us. Aunt had a much more lavish lifestyle in Bangalore actually. Here with us, mother gave us a Western influence while father, who was a scholar and wrote books and translated Sanskrit works, added an Indian element into everything. All the real glamour was in Bangalore. We were more Malayali in that sense, and there was an aura of rigour with more traditional habits in Madras.’85 Indira’s son would only glean some of his royal heritage first-hand in the 1960s, in fact. Writing about it later, he would say:
I was ten when I was introduced to a broken legacy. Schooling in [Madras] was a no-nonsense affair, riotous and ordinary. During one of my vacations, I was taken to Attingal … There we were welcomed into the old family temple with traditional honours, mind-boggling for a schoolboy. For the first time I was confronted with the trappings of royalty. Shirtless and sweating, wearing a brand new gold-bordered dhoti, I was horrified to find the probing gaze of a couple of hundred locals focussed upon me. My mother, aunt, and sister bore the limelight more gracefully. There were pipes blowing, and drums. Our grand procession made its way from the palace buildings to the temple. I was in the forefront, a most uneasy exhibit. My eyes were rooted to the ground. My hands clutched a rebellious dhothi. Each step was torture.86
It was in 1952 that Indira gave birth to her daughter, Shobhana, and then in 1955 to her son, Shreekumar.87 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s first grandson was not born in Madras, though, but in Bangalore in 1953 when Lalitha gave birth to a boy, after five girls in a line. ‘Mother was delighted that she had a son. She loved us girls, but after so many daughters a son was a welcome addition, and we too were very thrilled about having a brother.’88 ‘I am counting the days,’ wrote the Maharani from Trivandrum, ‘for the Xmas holidays to begin, so I can see all of you again, especially my little grandson!’89 The advent of Balagopal and then Shreekumar two years later gave Sethu Lakshmi Bayi much joy. It was in 1909 that she had nearly had a son, when the baby died, and now forty-four years later, for the first time there was a male heir in her branch of the royal house, even if by this time it meant little. In due course, when Balan and Shreekumar were a year old respectively, they were dedicated to Sri Padmanabhaswamy, like all male members of the dynasty were. ‘You had to present the baby before the shri
ne and walk away, without looking back. The child now belonged to the deity, not to you.’90
Balan’s birth, however, revealed some of Lalitha’s extravagance and the fact that while she had left the palace, that royal tendency towards excessive generosity, so evident in her mother, had not left her. Her cousin tells how,
… normally it was Kochu Thankam who helped with her pregnancies, but due to some reason when it was Balan’s time, it was my mother [the Maharani’s sister-in-law] who went to Bangalore to assist Lalitha. At some point she told her, ‘I think this time you are going to have a boy.’ Lalitha laughed it off, saying she would quite like a son but she was probably never going to have one. And then when Balan was born, she was so overjoyed that she called my mother and said, ‘Ammayi, tell me whatever you want as a present and you shall have it!’ My mother thought for a while and said that there was this pink chandelier in Kovalam that she liked. But that was in Kerala, and Lalitha wanted to give her a present immediately. So she took my mother into her bedroom, opened a safe there, and literally scooped up loose diamonds in her hands. She wrapped it in a handkerchief and insisted my mother take it! My father was furious when mother returned to Madras with literally two handsful of diamonds! ‘Did you go there to help with the baby or fish for presents?’ he admonished her. But he also knew what Lalitha could be like when she was in a mood to be generous!91
Laughing about it now Rukmini remarks, ‘Well this is what I mean when I say we are not cut out to do business. I have seen my mother giving away gold necklaces and parts of what used to be an extensive collection, to servants and maids. She always said she didn’t wear them in any case, and if they made the staff happy, that was fine.’ Similarly, she knew perfectly well that the servants pilfered from the stores. ‘But unless it was extremely egregious, she did not stop it. Grandfather used to bemoan and compare this to grandmother, who was also very similar in giving away everything with a great and almost unrealistic sense of munificence. “Mother and daughter will squander everything,” he would warn, but as usual, he knew his remonstrations were hardly going to stop them! In that sense they remained in that royal mould, unable to give up that traditional benevolence.’92 In Madras, Indira and her husband were very generous too, extending their patronage to the Hindu cause. ‘We had in the 1960s a guru,’ recalls Shreekumar, ‘and I remember not only him but literally hundreds of his followers and disciples being hosted by us regularly.’93
In the meantime, in 1952, the Elayarajah also settled down in Bangalore with his wife and children. A beautiful mansion was constructed on Cunningham Road and during the initial years Radha and he remained on close terms with Lalitha and Kerala Varma. ‘They were always invited to our parties and came most of the time, and we used to go there when they had functions. But after some time, it petered out and they started moving in different circles. But the Elayarajah would still visit now and then, and we would do likewise, and years later his children were friendly with some of ours. But that phase where father and mother, and the Elayarajah and Radha were always together came to an end. But I think they were glad that much of the old suspicion between the two families, at least in Bangalore, had been resolved and they could all meet for the occasional relaxed lunch or tea, and have a good time.’94
During one of these years a distinguished visitor called on Lalitha and the girls in the form of the Maharajah himself. ‘It was the early 1950s definitely, and I think it was after the Elayarajah moved here. He came with his sister and her children and family, and it was a very pleasant meeting.’95 In the photographs that survive of this visit, however, the contrast between Lalitha and her little ex-princesses in Bangalore and the Junior Maharani’s grandchildren is evident. The latter, in south Indian silk attire, look strikingly different from a harassed- looking Lakshmi in a little frock, or an Uma looking completely nonplussed on her rather large bicycle, or Rukmini, in her early teens, and dressed in a salwar kurta, unheard of in Kerala. The meeting went warmly, however, and Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was pleased to hear that the Maharajah had visited her daughter. ‘As usual’, though, laughs Rukmini, ‘grandfather called for caution. “It is curiosity about how you are all faring that has brought them there,” he warned, “so you had better not get carried away into thinking of becoming permanent friends.” He was ever the realist and always on his guard, even when the Maharajah had just come to say hello. But of course he had his reasons and there was all that history.’96
And indeed there was. Despite varied best efforts to patch up, there was too much odium from the past, and a real reconciliation between the two branches of the royal family of Travancore, even when power and titles had become redundant, remained elusive. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s daughters had chosen to move on. And soon it would be the turn of the Maharani herself.
THE END
‘Smt. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’
20
Once I Had a Kingdom
‘I have had to cut down from twenty-four cooks to twelve cooks!’ fumed a thoroughly harassed Valiya Koil Tampuran to his grandchildren when they arrived one summer in the 1950s.1 Great many changes were stirring Satelmond Palace since the departure of both of Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s daughters to the siren call of life in more exciting cities. And Rama Varma was not pleased by the myriad adjustments he had to manage. The strength of the household staff was heavily pruned; from the 300 servants who once presented themselves for service, the Maharani now employed not more than seventy people.2 A natural consequence was that a great deal of that quaint formality about her lifestyle ceased to exist. The soldiers at the gates were asked to suspend the custom of treating the world to trumpets and a now meaningless Travancore anthem every time Sethu Lakshmi Bayi went out, and the number of active pattakkars was reduced. Suddenly, now that the establishment had to be maintained out of the Maharani’s reduced allowances, there was no necessity for those whose sole job was to bow and strut about regally up and down the palace halls all day. The past was melting away.
Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was also troubled with a great deal of loneliness during these years, but as usual, played it down with her inborn optimism. ‘I am getting used to being alone, really. So long as I hear from you fairly often, how you are all getting along, I shall feel all right,’ she wrote to a concerned Lalitha on one occasion. On a festive day, when the palace earlier overflowed with streams of visitors and family, its great halls ringing with the laughter of the girls dancing and feasting, she missed them even more. ‘Though I shall spend a rather lonely Vishu, the thought of you all will keep me quite happy.’3 ‘Grandmother was very pained to be separated from all of us because family meant everything to her,’ tells Rukmini, ‘but she knew it had to be done.’4 As Sethu Lakshmi Bayi herself wrote, ‘We have to make sacrifices for the children’s sake,’ for ‘We can have no idea through what all paths life is going to lead them. They must be trained and prepared to face everything.’5 She still met her family twice a year for fairly prolonged stretches of time. Tells Uma:
During the winter vacations we would all show up at the palace. It was the busiest season for grandmother, because she would get about finding more servants to take care of our needs, instructing the cooks to prepare our favourite dishes, bringing in teachers to brush up our Malayalam and to make sure we didn’t forget our lessons, and things like that. During the summer vacations she would take a house in the hills, and we would drive down from Bangalore, and aunt from Madras, and spend several months all together.6
In 1954, the Maharani rented her usual house in Coonoor called ‘Stalisfield’, while Lalitha took ‘Cedara’ nearby. Aspect Lodge had been sold by now, although they passed it on walks and remembered fondly their times there. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi arrived before Lalitha did, and seems to have been extremely active in charting out the logistics of the holiday. ‘We have brought the Sunbeam and Hindustan,’ she wrote to her daughter. ‘I am going to suggest that we send the Sunbeam to you. With two cars it will be much safer and ever so much more convenient. You both and th
e little ones can come in the Sunbeam, and Hariharan can drive the three older girls in the Buick. And you can bring all the maids with you, and most of all you can bring a lot of luggage with you. How else will you manage, I can’t imagine!’7 A few days before the Bangalore party started out, she also sent them suggestions on rest houses on the way. ‘I have got all the information you wanted,’ she declared triumphantly, her brimming enthusiasm manifest in her writing.8
But these vacations never lasted as long as she would have liked, and for the next several months she would wait eagerly for her daughters and the children to return. The year 1955 was a significant one in the family, as the Maharani turned sixty. Lalitha and Indira were determined to organise a celebration. The Valiya Koil Tampuran was away in Bangalore for surgery, though, and Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was not herself very keen. ‘Don’t you think it would be in very bad taste, if nothing else, to be making elaborate arrangements [for celebrations] now? Your father never liked the idea and now God also seems to be against it … Console, yourself,’ she concluded, ‘it is just fate.’9 But her daughters were not prepared to acquiesce. Rama Varma was persuaded to give his blessings for a big commemoration, and everyone came down to Trivandrum for the birthday. The Maharani, who for decades now had been relatively reclusive, would have liked it to be a private, family affair, but that was not to be. ‘I feel really quite nervous,’ she wrote, ‘about all these strange people coming. Let us hope there won’t be any displeasure. I tried to dissuade Indira from going to invite “them” [i.e., the Junior Maharani] … but she is determined to do her bit! What does father say? The only pleasurable thing about it all is that I shall be able to see you all, even if only for a day or two!’10
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