One day, not long ago, Sudarshan showed me a photograph. Sudarshan, a young man I am friends with, is a photographer. He said, ‘Imasi1, they say this is a photograph of the fourth queen of Maharaja Churachand. Did you know her?’ Yes. The photograph was of my mother Tampak, Maid of Chongtham. I was entranced. Enchanted. I was close to tears. Mother! My beautiful mother, where have you been hiding all this time? I looked again and again at this champak blossom of Langthabal, this nymph of Chinga Hill. They said you were a nymph. Did all the land not say that, my mother? I was beside myself. Memories of days gone by unfolded vividly before my eyes. I looked again at the old photograph.
On its back was inscribed: Queen Chetanamanjuri Tampak, 4th Queen of Sir Churachand Maharaj of Manipur – died Thursday June 7, the 28th day of Kalen, 1959 age 63 years. I wanted to cry out, ‘I’ve found it, I have found it!’ Just as the man in Rabindranath Tagore’s story Guptodhon had done, ‘I’ve found it! I have found it!’
Indeed, I had found it; I had found a rare treasure. I was able to see the face of a nymph which otherwise would have disappeared, unnoticed. She was Tampak, the Maid of Chongtham, fourth consort of my sovereign father, my Pabung Sanakhya. I knew her very well. I had known her for a long time. When I found this picture I was already a mother. My sons Bobby and Somi had already been born. News came one day: ‘The Respected Grandmother the Lady Chongtham is ailing; she wants to see you.’ At that time my mother, the Lady Chongtham, was staying at her royal birthplace at Chingamakha.
After my father died in 1941, our palace, our household, had scattered. World War II followed. We could not keep track of who went where. No one even enquired about anyone else. Since the 10th of May – the day Japan dropped its bombs, and my birthmother2, the maharani the Lady Ngangbam, and our family, took refuge at her farm estate at Malom – we have not returned, even to this day, to our palace home. Today we are outsiders. We merely look from a distance. When we are near, we only pause but for a while. Around this time I was so tied up that I did not even have the time to ask about the whereabouts of my mother the Lady Chongtham.
As soon as I got the news, I accompanied my husband Dr. Nando and went with him to see her. I was able to wait on her. Thereafter I saw her regularly without missing a single day. My mother the Lady Chongtham said, ‘Princess Wangol3, your mother is pleased. If only your sister, my daughter, the princess Tampha, were with us today, she would have taken care of me….’
On this day too, at this very moment, the photograph of my beautiful mother looks at me. It seems to be saying, Little One, Little Wangol, from whom did you hear that I am not well? It seems to say, what will you do for your mother? Your sister is no more; Mother’s Tampha is now dead…. How my thoughts crowd me! I said, I am here Mother – your littlest, weakest child is still here. I will fulfil my obligations…. Mother, now that I think about it, I feel so unhappy. How did you, Beautiful One, come to be in the big, glittering prison of a palace? Were you happy? You had no offspring. You left no child of your own. You never had a child from the man you loved. Did you live with that hurt all your life, without letting a soul know; how did you live with it among your sister queens? I never knew that either.
At the time, I was but a child and knew only happiness; of suffering I knew nothing. It is only now, when I think of this matter, that it sears me all the more. But this one thing I want to know, one word from your heart. Your daughter Tampha was your friend; she surely would have known. You must surely have told her. I saw you were very friendly with my older maiden sisters. You came often to the royal quarters of the maharani, the Lady Ngangbam. You laughed, loudly, among them all. That made it known that you existed, that the Lady Chongtham was present.
But behind that laughter, did you sigh with the pain of being childless? I know now, in the life of a woman, especially in the life of a woman in the royal palace, being childless is an enormous defeat. I heard that once you took on a trip to Brindavan, where it was believed that if a husband and wife were to take a dip together in the sacred pools of Radhakunda and Shyamkunda they would be blessed with an heir, they would have a child. It was said that you could not bring yourself to bring this up to His Highness, your husband. You were unable to overcome the barrier of your step-queens’ mockery. Oh, the shame. And so the Lady Chongtham withdrew. I do not know who spread this rumour.