What Tada17 Khelchandra the pundit really wanted was for me to write a little more seriously about my sovereign father, Maharaja Churachand. Whenever I asked him a question related to other matters, he would start talking about Sovereign Father. He told me personal stories about my sovereign father that no one else knew. But I paid him scant attention.
When I look back I realize that a family in the palace meant really the respective families of our birthmothers. Even though he was our father, the king was never close to us as a father. This must surely have been part of our ancient tradition. I do not know when it started. I was familiar with stories of how our kings had many wives. Whenever we had discussions about women, I would often feel the need to find out more about this. I wished to know why they had so many wives. I had heard that Maharaja Bhagyachandra the Divine King, Embracer of the Hills, had many consorts. This amazed me. Experts tell me this was surely a political necessity. They were not simply taken as wives.
One day, when I went to Tada Khelchandra to ask him something, he handed me a document which said
The Administrative Report of the Political Agency. The marriage ceremony of H.H. the Raja with Ningol Ibemcha, the daughter of Ngangbam Jugal Singh, Imphal, was celebrated at the Rajbari on 17th March 1905.
Vide Administrative Report of the Political Agency in the year 1904-1905
That day too, when Tada wanted to tell me so much about my sovereign father, I could not stay long. But I began to think – in the household of the king Maharaja Churachand, there was another family. There was, from the day he took Ibemcha, Lady of Ngangbam, in marriage, a more intimate family. But I cannot follow in my Tada’s footsteps. I cannot even get close to this vast treasure house during my lifetime. So as a daughter of the Lady Ngangbam I have to write what I can. When I introduce myself to people, all this time I have said, I am the youngest daughter of Maharaja Churachand and the Maharani, the Lady Ngangbam.
So I ask today: Who was Ngangbam Ibemcha? I never found out much about her origins. But the Ngangbam family, in particular my uncles, loved to tell their stories, to talk to me about their origins, to describe who they were. Ngangbam Jugolsingh was the son of the daughter of sovereign Maharaja Marjit, the Vanquisher of Indians. They say that, at one time Maharaja Marjit’s son Prince Kanhai lost the war he waged for the throne of Manipur, and fled with his family and servants towards the Tongjei Maril pass. Then a young man, an unmarried man, the brawny Jugolsingh was in service to his uncle. The road was in the hills, and they travelled it in their defeat. At one point the young man Jugolsingh carried his uncle on his back up a steep hill. They reached the top of the hill. The defeated prince turned towards his Meitei homeland in tears, and said, ‘I am content Jugolsingh; your uncle is content. But I am not destined to serve Lord Govinda in this lifetime. So, Jugolsingh, may you be able to serve Him through your children.’ And he wept aloud, the defeated prince.
This story was often told by Ngangbam Jugolsingh, always with tears in his eyes, it was said. This he believed too: I once dreamed the sun and the moon were in my lap. That is why, with my uncle’s blessing, I have two daughters who are able to serve Lord Govinda. This is the truth. Even though Ngangbam Jugolsingh did not have a claim to the throne of Manipur, two of his daughters, Ibemcha and Priyosakhi, married the king and were able to serve Lord Govinda. It might be interesting to know that my sovereign father took Priyosakhi as his third queen and made her his Leimakhubi Ahal. Prince Joysana, also known as Joysingh, the son that my aunt bore him, was adopted by my mother the maharani the Lady Ngangbam the moment he was born – so we never knew he was not a full sibling.
The Ngangbam family went through hard times. They were poor. But Jugolsingh was a man who lived in the past. He lived proudly. So after the British annexed Manipur in 1891 Jugolsingh, the descendant of princes, lived in exile in a village called Khamran. One reason was that the Ngangbam clan had ancestral estates and paddy fields there in Khamran and it was convenient to seek refuge there. Jugolsingh did nothing but live there, re-telling his stories of old, weeping, and living in the past. But his wife, the Maid of Yumnam, worked and took care of the household. My mother told me, ‘Your grandmother was blessed by the goddess Lakshmi. She worked like any village woman; she earned a livelihood. She owned a female buffalo that bore only female calves and so was able to fill an entire stable. Grandmother did her own milking, and by making yogurt that she sold to market women bound for Imphal, made a lot of money and ultimately became a wealthy woman of the village.’
I recall at this point a lovely story I once heard. Ngangbam folks who heard it often tell it even today, because they still retain their ties to the village called Khamran. They still have their ancestral lands and paddy fields. Every year the Ngangbam children go there on a picnic. The wealthy Jugolsingh lived comfortably on his large estate with his small children and his nephew, Yumnam Krishnasingh. A small canal ran right by their estate. The custom of the villagers was to eat their supper and go to bed at dusk. One evening, my efficient grandmother sat out on the darkened front porch after putting the things away and saw, in the distant blackness, a row of torches at the foot of the hills. There must have been more than twenty torches that moved afoot in the distance. She did not give it much thought. They all went to bed. All were resting. But late in the night a voice called out, ‘Jugolsingh, open the door!’ The warrior Jugolsingh did not open the door. He knew the callers were bandits. The row of torches seen in the distance had been them. He waited, sword in hand, but did not open the door. His quick-witted spouse threw their gold and silver under the bed. She hid whatever she could lay her hands on. All the children were asleep. She strapped the littlest one onto her back.
There was no use calling out as the house was isolated. And who would be unafraid enough of a band of bandits armed with knives and bows and arrows, to come out in the dead of night? The bandit leader laughed and shouted, ‘Jugolsingh, Descendant of Princes, are you the one they say is valiant in battle? Come out – let us have a contest.’ They say Jugolsingh leaped out, sword in hand, and cried out to his nephew, ‘Krishnasingh, Bring out the poisoned arrows!’ As this was going on, my grandmother, the Maid of Yumnam, with her child on her back, grabbed a weaving pole and joined him in chasing the robbers away. The band of bandits ran away but Jugolsingh fell unconscious, with nine sword wounds. Later, his Ibemcha, who was about ten years old, would take meals to the Civil Hospital in Imphal for the wounded Jugolsingh.
So after Ibemcha was married to the king, the child king asked his father-in-law Jugolsingh about this story. ‘Father, was there anyone in the band of bandits that you recognized?’ The king knew that the gang had to be from Imphal. But Jugolsingh replied, ‘There were some I knew. But this is an old story. Your servant will not say who it was….’ My sovereign father looked at the nine sword scars and was deeply touched. But Jugolsingh did not name names to the very end. Jugolsingh, valiant in battle, maintained the code of warriors.
Hearing this story, I remember now a very mysterious man who was the leader of a large gang of bandits in Manipur during the reign of my sovereign father. The interesting part is that when I began to comprehend these things, having grown up somewhat, there was a very tall, entertaining man among the courtiers who came to serve Sovereign Father. He could enter the palace as he wished. He often came to the quarter of the maharani the Lady Ngangbam and took money from my mother saying his temple idols were destitute. The man was a Brahmin. This was a time when there was a gang of robbers at large in Imphal that was terrorizing the populace. But they could not be apprehended. Later on, I heard that the leader of the gang was the Brahmin who used to spend days and nights in the palace.
How scared we were! A man so popular in the palace the gang leader! My older sisters sat around and talked among themselves. They said that after they had looted and taken what they wanted from a rich man who was a land inspector from around Khurai, and had beaten up all the members of the household, a small boy slashed fearfully at the leg of a bandit as they were about to leave. But they ran off. When a man started coming regularly to the hospital to get medication for a wounded man sometime later, the doctor said, bring the wounded man. But he never came. Using this as a source, the police arrested the wounded man. The Brahmin gang leader was dragged out. Thinking about it just now, we never knew where the man came from. We heard he was a clever man who had lived for a long time in Burma and had also been known to pass himself off as a traditional doctor. I do not know, as it comes to me now, but I think there was something mysterious about the man. He was arrested. They say he was put in prison. I was terrified because at times he had held me in his lap – Oh… so it was that man!