I was studying for my Bachelor’s degree in Shillong. In those days one had to spend a night in Dimapur on the way to Imphal when returning from Shillong. And so whenever I was making that journey, I would have to board in a hotel owned by Manipuris. My mother the Lady Ngangbam would send ahead a large fish-basket from Manipur that she packed with dried fish and the like. I have not forgotten how on those nights we had to spend there we used to have a wonderful time, sharing meals with the adult accompanying driver and others.
I reached my home in Imphal. I reached the palace. How happy I was every time I came home in this manner for the holidays! I would immediately wander excitedly in and out of my mothers’ quarters and my sisters’ rooms. But this time, I do not know why, I felt that all was quiet and depressed in the royal palace. I did not know the exact reason and I was afraid to ask. But this memory was imprinted upon my young heart – that there was something wrong somewhere, something was going on, and I felt anxious without knowing the reason why. Later, I got to know that our sovereign father had begun to feel unwell. But except for a select few, we children were not allowed to visit very much. Keep your voices down, said people quietly. Keep quiet, your sovereign father is ill. That made me even more anxious; it frightened me.
We knew that some people, in our family, were sick with tuberculosis, also called phthisis back then. My eldest sister Tamphasana, for one, had died from tuberculosis. And our most loved and adored, my middle sister, the beautiful Tombisana too, was ill with it at this time. And it was muttered quietly that our sovereign father’s illness had turned out to be tuberculosis. I got a huge shock when first I heard this. I did not believe it; I did not want to believe it.
Very suddenly one day, while I was in Manipur on holiday, Sovereign Father left the palace in Manipur in his car together with his children and servants. We did not know the reason why. Flying a red flag, Maharaja Churachand’s car drove out of the palace carrying my mother the Lady Ngangbam and me, and accompanied by some servants.
We reached Mao. We had to spend the night there. The Brahmin cooks set about preparing food for our sovereign father. It must have been just then that Mr. Gimson, Manipur’s Political Agent, arrived at Mao. He and Sovereign Father had a long talk in Mao’s beautiful, dignified dak bungalow. Mr. Gimson then went back. I never knew what Sovereign Father and he talked about. My mother Maharani the Lady Ngangbam may have known. She took part in the conversation. But we did not head directly to Nabadwip though I had heard that was where we were going. Sovereign Father’s journey took a detour to Shillong. I was so angry. I had happily come home from Shillong and so I resented returning there. Later I came to know that this journey of our sovereign father’s was due to the fact that he had left Manipur with some dissatisfaction. Surely, we thought, he must be going to Shillong to rest and think. I do not remember how long we returned to Shillong for and lived at Redlands. While we were there I used to see Uncle Paramananda, my guardian at the time, talking regularly with Sovereign Father, but I do not remember him meeting any other people. I saw him sleeping most of the time. The library where I kept the books my sovereign father had bought for me, and which later was my own much-loved room, was turned into a bedroom for him. The rest of us stayed in other rooms in Redlands. As far as most of the servants went, some lived in the kitchen, while others were scattered around La Chetly91. None of Sovereign Father’s immediate family was there save my mother the Lady Ngangbam and I. One day, I pushed open the door to the small room my father was in. The room looked different. It was no longer the bright room that had been my library, with light coming in through the window. The windows were now draped with thick velvet. There was only a small lamp to provide light. Sovereign Father was alone in his bed. He looked deep in thought. I had heard that it was his practice to draw the heavy curtains and stay alone at crucial times when he needed to think.
I do not know why I entered then. It might have been dusk. My father called to me very weakly, ‘Wangol’. He told me to come over. I sat down on the floor and held both of his hands. His hands were hot. He must have been running a fever. My father said to me quietly, ‘Wangol, your father is unhappy.’ I burst out sobbing like any child would who hears that its father and mother are unhappy. Stroking my head, he changed the subject and said, ‘I will make some for you too. Yes, I will make some for you too, my child. I have made jewellery for all your sisters. I will make some for my child too.’ I wept and said, ‘Father, I don’t want any jewellery. I don’t want any gold.’ I cried. I did not know at the time that this journey was the last time the child king Maharaja Churachand who became the king of Manipur at the age of eight, would leave Manipur. My older sisters may have known; I did not. But I cannot forget this incident even today. It scarred my young heart. Even today, I feel it as if it has just happened this instant. I can hear it in my ears even now, how he called to me, ‘Wangol’. But there is more to write. There is also more to learn. How hurt my father was. Why did he leave Manipur? I wish to find out how he suffered defeat at the hands of others; how he left Manipur humbled.
I had saved this anecdote about my sovereign father to write as the closing story in my The Maharaja’s Household. But when I began to recall the stories of Shillong’s Redlands, I could no longer endure the desire to write the story of my feeble father Maharaja Churachand, at one time renowned the world over as a sportsman and a shrewd politician, who had now returned an incurable invalid to a room in Shillong’s Redlands. Even today I want to discover how the child king Maharaja Churachand lived and spent a long time in the secret inner worlds and acid intrigues of politics.
As I began to gather my thoughts to write and began to remember the words, The Last Journey of Maharaja Churachand, I approached my Tada Khelchandra. I asked him, ‘Tada, did my father clash with the British Government and leave Manipur in anger? Did the first king to be installed under the British Government, leave Manipur in anger, resentful of their unrelenting interference in his personal as well as political life? I want to know, Tada. Please tell me.’ At that moment, the long-serving Member of Parliament from Manipur of Ningthoukhongjam, known as N. Tombi, a close relative through connections to my royal aunt, happened to be sitting near Tada. He said unexpectedly, ‘There are many hidden stories here. There came about a big change in the life of Maharaja Churachand. Most people do not know this. In the later part of the Maharaja’s life, he realized that he did not have freedom under the British government. The king revolted; I will show you the records some day. I cannot tell My Lady everything in one sitting. I will tell you one day, along with examples.’
I had thought I was coming to the end of my memoir The Maharaja’s Household but I find I cannot end the story of my father as someone always comes along, as if grabbing me by the hand and pulling me, pointing with their finger, saying, This is missing; this has been left out. It might have been more beautiful had I finished it like an ignorant young girl simply telling the story of her father. It might have been a sort of biography. The many stories about my sovereign father increasingly disorient me in my late years. They make me want to disclose; they make me want to tell other people.
I heard once that during Sovereign Father’s time, some leaders of the Congress Party in Manipur had sent a letter to the Governor of Assam. It said, ‘Remove Manipur’s Maharaja Churachand from Manipur’, and so on. But the Governor of Assam did not consent. It was reported that he replied, ‘We do not have the power to remove the Maharaja of Manipur.’ I decided that I would like to get a copy of the petition submitted by leaders of the Congress Party of the day. I have decided to find it. I am sure I will.
In addition to the stories of Maharaja Churachand in the Administrative Report of Manipur, I heard there were many more about him written in Major Maxwell’s personal diary. I had not known that when Major Maxwell was deciding whom to install as king in Manipur, he had said that Maharaja Gambhirsingh’s sons and grandsons had done great wrong to the British and to Victoria, the British Queen, and so it would be right to find a different lineage from which to select a new king. In suggesting this Major Maxwell took on a great responsibility. I heard, only today, that when he approached Puskar, Maharaja Narasingh’s son and the grandfather of Maharaja Churachand, to ask him to be the king of Manipur, he had replied, ‘I cannot be king. Choose from among my grandnephews – from the children left behind by the sons of my older brother, Crown Prince Bhubonsingh, Maharaja Narasingh’s oldest son.’ In this way, following the instruction of Puskar, the royal great uncle of Maharaja Churachand, Maxwell came to see Lalitamanjuri Numitleima, Maid of Moirangthem, who lived in very reduced circumstances bringing up her four children.92
The respected Chongtham Samarendra told me of a most lovely incident relating to this. And that was that Maxwell looked over the royal grandsons of Crown Prince Bhubonsingh, picked up the youngest and smallest one, the little child Churachand, in his arms and exclaimed, ‘Here is your king!’ There are stories that the child Amusana Churachand was frightened, and thrashed about as he cried. Or so the story goes. I then requested Tada Pundit Khelchandra, ‘Tada, I want to know more about my sovereign father; tell me more.’ The pundit handed me a piece he had written entitled, How Churachand was made King. I think I will not include this essay here. Maybe Tada Khelchandra can include it in the foreword to this book.93
After staying in Shillong for some time, we went to Nabadwip with Sovereign Father. I did not know much about the inside story of this since I was quite young. But I came to hear that since Maharaja Churachand was ailing, the British Government had said, please go to Calcutta for treatment. We will make all the arrangements. Sovereign Father seems to have taken this suggestion as a humiliation and became very angry. He had apparently taken it as a ploy to send him away from Manipur. It had been at this point that, one day without warning, he had abruptly left Manipur, taking us with him. I have only come to know of this now. I heard later that he had said, I will not see the doctors you send me. I will not stay in Calcutta either; ‘I will stay in Nabadwip94.’ And so Sovereign Father moved into Gopalji Temple, the large temple, performance hall, and residential quarters he had built earlier, and waited out his days. I had to return to Shillong a little later since I was still studying. But though I had spent many very happy days there as a young girl, and as a young adult, I felt a little uneasy at Redlands this time, as if something somewhere had gone wrong.
I could bring the story of The Maharaja’s Household to a close here. But I hear in my ear, as if my sovereign father is telling me, ‘Keep writing. There is more yet, Little One… Little One, father’s own Little Wangol.’ I do not know; will I be able to write more?