The arrival of the princesses from Bangalore always brought with it great excitement in Trivandrum. ‘I think,’ tells the Maharani’s nephew, ‘these girls, with their unusual clothes, bobbed hair, convent mannerisms, always talking in English, seemed a wonder to the old folk in Trivandrum.’11 Soon after their arrival they would be invited to join the Junior Maharani at Kowdiar Palace for tea. ‘That old business of paying courtesy calls had ended,’ remembers Rukmini, ‘but we went out of politeness, and they were always very gracious towards us. The Junior Maharani always wanted to know what we were studying, who our friends were and so on. I don’t think she liked it much when we came out with a string of Christian names, and I remember her shaking her head and saying we must always remember our Hindu roots!’12 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi found this rather amusing. ‘The other day,’ she wrote to Rukmini, ‘the Junior Maharani remarked that you were all getting too much of the Christian atmosphere and outlook by going to school and mixing with that crowd. For instance, she said, you were all “touching wood” for something or other, all the time. What the Christians implied by this is, she explained, that in imagination they were touching the wood of Christ’s cross to ward off evil and bring good luck! Now what do you think of that!’13
But even letters were no permanent antidote to her loneliness, and it slowly became obvious that she craved the company of family members. It was much like her cheerless growing-up years when she yearned for visits from her parents and siblings. At that time she had had no option but to carry on. Now, however, her position had been altered altogether, and there was no ‘duty’ or dynastic obligation to which she was bound to stay true. ‘The palace and all that began to mean very little to her if we were not there to share that life,’ remarks Uma, and slowly Sethu Lakshmi Bayi began to consider a life-changing decision.14 For the time being, however, there were other concerns to keep the Maharani busy. In 1952, the estate in Peermade, which had been given to Indira, was sold, and soon afterwards Lalitha disposed of her estate in Devikulam; both had fallen into disuse and become cumbersome to maintain. By 1955, Lalindloch Palace, of all their family’s favourite memories, was also set to be lost. ‘There is a note in the Kerala Kaumudi,’ the Maharani informed, ‘to say that the Government has sanctioned the taking over of Vellayini for the AV College.’15 A new agricultural college was contemplated next to the Vellayini Lake, and Lalindloch with its 100 acres of grounds and the palace buildings, was right in the middle of the proposed location. Political uncertainty meant that nothing was done immediately, as governments fell only to be replaced by other equally unstable minority regimes. ‘God alone knows what is going to happen about Vellayini now,’ Sethu Lakshmi Bayi wrote again. ‘Anyway, I have dismantled the old house almost completely.’16 By July 1955, however, the keys were entrusted to the government and the Maharani awaited news on their compensation. Though at first she was given to believe that ‘they mean to deal fairly’17 when the final cheque for Rs 9 lakh arrived, she didn’t find that especially satisfactory. Unwilling to bicker and haggle, though, she let it be. There would be no more jaunts at the country house, and the sale of Vellayini marked the end of an era.
As the years passed, more and more property had to be relinquished, each severing with it a part of her many memories of bygone times. When V.P. Menon came to negotiate terms with the royal family, certain properties were set aside as the Maharajah’s ‘private’ estate and the rest given over to the people. The latter, however, was selling some of these and the Maharani tried to object stating that the term ‘private’ did not mean they were the personal possessions of the Maharajah as an individual to alienate, but were in fact properties of the entire royal family.18 Her objections, while acknowledged, however, were not redressed, and the Maharajah continued with the sales. By 1964, the Valiya Koil Tampuran would lose Halcyon Castle at Kovalam for a pittance of Rs 5.26 lakh when the government decided to acquire it. This upset him extremely, and in a fit of anger, on receiving the government’s notice, he is said to have slammed his desk and thrown everything on it on to the floor.19 A move was also afoot to take over Villa Manimala at Pothencode, but Rama Varma put his foot down when his last and only remaining property was threatened. ‘I think,’ he is said to have caustically remarked to the minister concerned, ‘we are to quietly accept all this because we committed one grave mistake. And that is that for seven years Her Highness served Travancore faithfully as Regent.’ An embarrassed minister cancelled the acquisition order, and the Valiya Koil Tampuran was able to retain Pothencode for many more years, till it was sold after his demise in the late 1970s.20
But Sethu Laksmi Bayi was fated to make her peace with all her losses, and one after another she gave up her possessions in what used to be Travancore. For a greater storm was about to uproot her permanently. In 1956, the three regions of Travancore, Cochin and Malabar were merged, after certain adjustments of territory with neighbouring Tamil Nadu, into the united state of Kerala. A new ministry would come to power in 1957 under the control of the communists, though it became obvious in the previous year itself that the wind was now blowing in that direction. It is said that the communists had an axe to grind against the royal family not only as a matter of principle but also because of the tragic Punnapra–Vayalar incident that had become an unforgettable highlight in their political evolution. The royal family now had to confront a great deal of retaliation as a consequence. And though the Senior Maharani had had little to do with the ruthless brutality of Sir CP’s regime, she was not spared. Bad luck, it appeared, was determined to hound Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
In April 1956 she reported to her daughters that the servants in the palace had formed a union under one of the cooks and a driver. ‘Nobody had thought of rebelling until then,’ remembers Rukmini, ‘because they were paid well, and like in the old days, their meals, clothes, accommodation and other needs were all taken care of. Moreover they only worked two weeks at a time. Grandfather was quite convinced that this rebellion was due to outside instigation.’21 Whether or not there was any such provocation, the fact was that while all of Kerala went down the communist road and labour unrest became the order of the day, Satelmond Palace could hardly remain a sunny paradise. Promptly, in a matter of days, the state’s labour officer got involved. ‘God alone knows how it is all going to end,’ a clearly distressed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi wrote. ‘There is a tense atmosphere here altogether.’22 Eventually, the situation was diffused when Rama Varma made it clear that labour laws did not apply to domestic servants, also pointing out that if working conditions were really as dreadful as they claimed, they were free to leave and that he was confident he could get by with the assistance of others who would be more than happy to work at the palace on existing terms.23
By 1957, however, the union raised its head again, having received a boost of confidence from the swearing-in of a communist Chief Minister in Kerala. A hunger strike was called, and on a certain day the Maharani woke up to find barely anyone in the palace. It did not help that in March that year she had suffered a heart attack, and Lalitha and Indira began to worry for her safety. ‘It was difficult because the palace was not built like a modern house,’ recalls Rukmini. ‘It was a large establishment, and when servants refused to operate it, the whole place fell apart. Even many suppliers stopped catering to grandmother, because they were communist sympathisers. It was very worrying.’24 Everywhere they turned, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and her husband only saw difficulty. The Junior Maharani also faced similar troubles, but had resources to grapple with them. At Satelmond, so isolated from power and influence for decades, there was no such option. Soon there was open defiance of the Valiya Koil Tampuran and even the Maharani, with slogans being shouted in their hearing. ‘You can’t imagine it. It was her home, and there was a rebellion in her courtyard.’ The climax of all this came was when one morning Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was informed by her sisters that the old Travancore flag had been taken down from the roof. Fluttering atop Satelmond Palace now instead was a communist b
anner. That was a tremendously poignant moment for her. While Rama Varma was furious and promised to get to the bottom of this, the incident confirmed the Maharani in a decision she had been contemplating for some time now. Turning to her husband she simply said, ‘I think it is time for us to go.’25
It was Rukmini who first came up with the proposal that Sethu Lakshmi Bayi should leave the palace and come and stay with her daughter. ‘I heard all about the union,’ she wrote in a letter in May 1956 when trouble had first occurred. ‘Why don’t you dismiss all the servants and come and stay with us in Bangalore? You can just bring your most trusted servants, or better still, we will do everything for you instead. You can stay sometimes with us, and sometimes with Auntie in Madras. Or, which will be delightful, you could stay all the while with us! Can’t you come? Be sure we will look after you more closely than ever a miser can look after his hard-won gold!’26 With all these problems confronting her, and with new ones grimacing, not to speak of the grinding deteriorations of age, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi came around to the view that perhaps her granddaughter’s suggestion was the wisest course for the future. It was not going to be an easy journey ahead; nobody had ever remotely conceived having one day to leave the palace and lead a different kind of life in a strange new world. But, with that profound courage that had never left her side, the Maharani decided to take a leap and adapt to the future. From Her Highness Sri Padmanabha Sevini Vanchi Dharma Vardhini Raja Rajeshwari Maharani Pooradam Tirunal Sethu Lakshmi Bayi Maharajah C.I., she was about to embark upon the final years of her life as simply Smt. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi.
By October, Lalitha and Kerala Varma arrived in Trivandrum, and a scheme was formulated to extract the Maharani from the palace. She was now practically under house arrest, with maidservants refusing to cooperate. K.G. Menon, the Chief Secretary of Kerala, arranged for police protection.27 ‘Till the car was brought to the front porch that morning,’ remembers Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s nephew, ‘nobody knew she was leaving.’28 Plainclothes policemen had earlier been deployed on the grounds to rein in the union should the situation threaten to get violent. Then the Maharani suddenly appeared at the porch, entered the car with Rama Varma, and departed just as quickly. ‘Grandfather later told me,’ states Rukmini, ‘that the servants had planned a demonstration near the gates and they were waiting there. They were quite stunned and taken aback by her abrupt departure.’ But what moved him most was not their going into exile like this. ‘It was the way grandmother, who never hurt a fly in all her life, was forced to leave.’ As they drove out of the gates, Rama Varma asked his wife whether she would like to have a last look at their home. But the Maharani refused. She didn’t want to behold her Satelmond, the home she designed with her husband and where she reared her children, the palace from where she had once ruled, like that, besieged by a mob screaming slogans. Towards the end of his life, with tears in his eyes the Valiya Koil Tampuran would tell Rukmini, ‘I asked her to have a last glimpse. But she never looked back.’29
The Maharani knew, deep in her heart, that she was not destined to return. So her first stop before she reached the railway station was at the gates of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple. She sent her driver to drop some coins into the collection box near the entrance, and turning in her seat, offered final prayers to her family deity. It was in his name that she had ruled the country, and it was in his presence that she now renounced it. It was to him that her dynasty and ancestors had pledged their fidelity and allegiance. And now, it was her fate, as the last of Travancore’s queens and one of the ultimate representatives of her lineage, to sever that bond. She had not worshipped in the shrine since 1936 but now, seated in her car, she addressed the deity directly and said, ‘Please forgive me. I must leave.’30 Her Humber then reached Trivandrum Central, a station she had built, and drove on to the railway platform, where as usual, a special carriage was reserved for her. A crowd, restrained by the police, gathered at the sight of these unusual happenings and many recognised their queen, bowing as she emerged from her car. The Maharani acknowledged the obeisance of her people for the last time in her life and boarded the train. As it pulled out of the station and the lush green fields and thatched cottages outside Trivandrum flashed past her window, tears filled Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s eyes. The Valiya Koil Tampuran sat down opposite her, struggling for words to console his royal wife, departing unsung and unthanked from the land she had helped build. But before he could say anything, she wiped her tears. Quietly picking up a book she had been reading, she turned its page and with that famous resilience and forbearance that was the hallmark of her journey through life, began a new chapter.
‘Grin and bear it’, her mother had taught her. And so she did.
‘I am thinking of buying a house in Bangalore,’ the Maharani wrote to her sister from Madras. ‘It is the house just next door to my daughter’s. The owner is planning to sell it. If only I could get it, it would be so convenient.’31 Sethu Lakshmi Bayi had gone from Trivandrum to Madras, where at the Egmore station waiting to receive her were her brothers and their families. She went to Harrington Road to her brother’s house first before moving to Indira’s place, where Shobhana and Shreekumar were delighted to welcome their grandmother. But plans to make Madras a permanent home had to be discarded because of the sweltering heat. Bangalore, then, with its more equable climate, was chosen as Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s new place of residence and her home in exile.
On 16 February 1958, the Maharani started out from Madras and at Kolar she was pleasantly surprised to see Lalitha, Kerala Varma and the children waiting to escort her to Richmond Road. She arrived in her majestic Humber but that great change that had suddenly enveloped her was patent for all to see. The soldiers on the footboards were gone, the outriders and escorts were no more, that stately procession around her had dissolved; it was all now a memory of times gone by. When she got out of her car on that strange highway, Sethu Lakshmi Bayi was no longer that great, splendid queen she had once been, but merely a grandmother, a regal lady in white. She was driven to Lalitha’s house, where, as during her previous stay, a wing was set aside for the use of her ménage. A fortnight later Lalitha and Kerala Varma, who had planned a holiday in Europe, took their leave, while the Maharani got down to the construction of her bungalow next door. ‘Having come to Bangalore,’ tells Uma, ‘she promptly moved on with her life. She refused to dwell on the past.’32
Purchasing the house at 7 Richmond Road was not a straightforward affair, however, since it had been leased to the military, and only after prolonged negotiations was the property released. The owner also sensed Sethu Lakshmi Bayi’s keenness to acquire it; therefore selling it for twice the market rate.33 For greater privacy, she also purchased vacant land from the bungalows around her, setting her home in the midst of vast gardens. Added to Lalitha’s property, the whole 4 acres of land offered much scope for landscaping and gardening, and before long the Maharani was mapping the layout of her home with her architects.34 The existing building was allowed to stand, but in addition to this a new wing was constructed with two very large bedrooms (‘halls really’), a drawing room, a library and several verandahs and porticos. The library, however, was only a shadow of its former glory, since a portion of the Maharani’s collection was donated to the Agricultural College in Vellayini when the government acquired Lalindloch.35 Looking at the house from the gate, after it was completed, it seemed like a huge, long building, with a number of outhouses and ancillary premises. ‘There were fountains, a lotus pond and lawns all around, with a rose garden, and white benches and several trimmed bougainvillea. One part was kept woody, like a forest.’36 The bungalow was named ‘Shrinivas’ and would be the Maharani’s home for the remainder of her life.
The move to Bangalore was not easy for Sethu Lakshmi Bayi. She had been reared from the age of five as a queen, and had known no other way of life. But she adapted to the change that had overwhelmed her old world and emerged as a new person from under that thick blanket of conventions that had hith
erto cloaked her life. ‘She became more relaxed,’ tells Indira, ‘after she left the palace. I think she was happier after all that glory and fanfare of palace life had gone, and she herself realised how much better and more peaceful it was this way.’37 Her grandchildren also noticed that she seemed to become a different person. ‘That aloofness we sensed as children,’ Parvathi recalls, ‘vanished. She became granny to us, plain and simple. She was still extremely dignified right to the end, but that aura of being this iconic Maharani receded into the background. She was more approachable, very relaxed and light-hearted, and every day after we came back from school and completed our homework, we would run off and be with her. That old palace habit, of all of us squatting around her and reading books became a daily affair.’38
Some of the younger grandchildren, like Ambika and Balan, also got to know their grandmother better as a person. ‘She had a sense of humour and she loved a laugh,’ tells Ambika. ‘It was amazingly delicate and gentle, but a clever one. It was also unbelievable how much she knew. She always spoke to us about things we were interested in. In fact it is now that I realise that she really didn’t speak about herself or what she had gone through in life. It was all what we wanted to talk about.’39 Of course the person most delighted to be with the Maharani was Rukmini, her pet and favourite. ‘It was obvious,’ remembers a cousin, ‘that the Maharani loved her family, but Rukmini came first in her affections.’40 Ambika too sensed this. ‘Rukmini was always different from the rest of us. She was always at grandmother’s, while we lived with mother, and she behaved in a very different way too.’41
Rukmini describes her own relationship with Sethu Lakshmi Bayi:
I never, ever heard grandmother complain about having to leave her home and palace. Once or twice when I pressed her to talk to me about the harassment she faced, she brushed it aside saying, ‘Those were just some things in a land far, far away.’ But she was really like a psychiatrist as far as I was concerned! I could speak to her about anything and everything under the sun! If I had problems with girls in school, I could come and talk to her. Or if a particular boy wanted to be friends with me, I could ask her what to do. Father would be furious at the very suggestion and say, ‘Keep off!’ But grandmother would listen, and say things like, ‘You may speak to him if you like, but be careful,’ and so on. She always gave the best advice and was always willing to listen. After my marriage, I know she did not fully approve of my lifestyle, but she was too kind to say so, though, now and then, when sneaking servitors informed her of my late hours—returning from parties after 2 a.m. and the likes—there was a mild reprimand. Her arrival made me feel much better, because I hadn’t quite come to terms with leaving the palace in the way mother and my sisters had. But watching grandmother do it so well was simply amazing! In hindsight the ease with which she cut herself from her past, without even the slightest hint of a fuss about it, is what really sets her apart.42
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