Whenever I sit down to write these memoirs, I always feel a great urge to write about people who were very close to Sovereign Father. No one will know about them if I do not write down their stories. That is why Chongtham Samarendra always said, ‘Imasi, please write for us as much as possible while you are able to or no one else will write; no one else will know.’
One thing I keep wanting to write about but keep forgetting to do, is not the enormous palace with the Bird’s Nest Dome (the gold covered domes of the Sri Sri Govindaji temple at the royal palace) that was made with the help of the British for our sovereign father that I knew when I was growing up, but the largish brick building, circled by staircases on three sides, known as the Small Building, just next to and east of the big building. This is the Small Building I often mention in my writing. When we were growing up, we never knew our sovereign father to reside, spend his nights or eat his meals in what we knew as the Big Building, the large palace we see today. It was the Small Building that most of our father’s family lived in. Sovereign Father’s cricket grounds famously known as Maharaja Churachand’s Playing Field, stretched away in the distance to the south of this Small Building and the Big Building next to it. And all my mothers’ royal quarters lay one after the other to the east of the Small Building. What amuses me most, though I did not even think of it at the time, is that most of the events and incidents I mention when I write took place in or around the Small Building. I should have mentioned this earlier while writing The Maharaja’s Household. But I did not think of it. Truthfully, I forgot.
I heard that the building was really constructed in time for my older brother Bodhchandra’s marriage to my sister-in-law Rampyari, the Princess of Borokhemji. Some say that my sovereign father built it with part of the enormous dowry of gold and silver brought by my sister-in-law. But I do not know what the truth is. The room I have already mentioned earlier, where the man I used to call Ta’ Mukta kept our sovereign father’s many uniforms, sashes and suchlike, was in this Small Building. At the southernmost end was our sovereign father’s bedroom, a beautiful, long room. It was on its long verandah that our sovereign father took his meals, joined by all of us small children in a row. Other people living here were Tamo, my second older brother PB, and in another room was my ailing older sister Tombiyaima.
A drawing of the many buildings in our sovereign father’s new palace in those days, including the big and small buildings, the queens’ quarters, the maharanis’ quarters, the temple and the royal guilds, done by an artist called Ibeton the Brahmin, still remains. This artist is the adopted son of Tamo, PB’s birthmother, Apambi Ahal Shyamasakhi, the Second Queen. I heard that he also made a model of the palace as it used to be, leaving out nothing, and entrusted it to Sobita86 when she was the curator at the museum. When I asked about it I heard that the model was either missing or destroyed. I find it very distressing to see how we lose so much in our lives in this careless manner. They say the sketch of the palace is still with Ibeton Sharma. I am thinking of requesting him for a copy. Otherwise if people look at the buildings encroaching on the palace today and the colony of strangers that has sprung up around it, they may well think that the palace has always looked like this. My lasting regret is that the Small Building was destroyed and sold off by someone. What stranger, what migrant’s family from where, carved up and shared the booty? Perhaps there is some information on this in the court chronicle. I must look it up. This is the first time that I have mentioned the Small Building. This is because I had distanced myself from the palace long before I began writing The Maharaja’s Household and I lived in a separate world.
I remember vividly now the room, near the armoire where my sovereign father’s various uniforms and ceremonial sashes were piled and where Ta’ Mukta used to nod off to sleep. Looking now at old photographs of my sovereign father I realize for the first time that the Child King Maharaja Churachand, my sovereign father, was an innovative, forward-thinking man in the way he dressed, knowing what to wear when and what outfit combining East and West would set a new fashion trend. And who washed all those, oh so many, clothes? And who ironed them all? These, too, I begin to remember. There was a laundryman who washed the ceremonial uniforms. He may have been just a laundryman, but he was a Meitei87. His name was Pechu the Laundryman, and we used to call him Ipu Pechu. I remember he lived somewhere around Keisamthong across the Nambul river. I think Ipu Pechu used to hand over the clothes he brought for my sovereign father to wear, especially his numerous Meitei pheijom-pumyat, turbans and the like, to Ta Mukta who counted them and put them away.
Some may wonder how a small child like me could remember a list of so many clothes, and seeing Ipu Pechu, and Mukta receiving them. Once, when I was little, I had the measles. And so, since my sisters and other siblings and children were occupying the quarter of my mother the Lady Ngangbam, I had to stay for some time, as ordered by the doctors, in a little room in the Small Building in the care of Tolchoubi, my wet-nurse. The long room that Ta’ Mukta was in charge of, where they kept my sovereign father’s ceremonial uniforms, was immediately next to the small room I was staying in. There was a glass window between the two rooms. It always had a thick curtain drawn over it. I kept drawing aside the curtain to look at Ta’ Mukta and Ipu Pechu. I would have been very bored and would have had a hard time if the curtain could not have been drawn aside and if the window were not made of glass. This was because I did not like being confined for many days in this small room with my nurse, as in a jail. So I whiled away my time and found comfort in drawing aside the curtain time and time again to watch Ta’ Mukta’s activities and Ipu Pechu bringing in the washing and putting it away. I also seem to have had only dried fish and plain rice to eat. So Ta’ Mukta’s room was where I spent my time.