Sovereign father had six boys and eleven girls in all. Of my ten royal mothers, two were childless. One was my mother Tampak, Maid of Chongtham, and the other was my younger mother, Maid of Angom.
From the time I became aware, my brothers and sisters all lived together in the palace. My bachelor brothers Crown Prince Bodhchandra, Priyabrata (PB) and Lokendra, also known as Sanatomba, lived in Sovereign Father’s main palace. But we rarely saw them as they had been sent abroad for their studies. We saw them when they came home for their holidays; they brought many interesting things from abroad. The other children and I coveted them. Bodhchandra, the eldest among us, lived permanently with his servants in a beautiful bungalow next to the royal office. This house was right next to where Lord Mahabali was installed. Only a road separated the two.
My unmarried older sisters, in particular, kept company with my birth-sisters, Tamphasana and Tombiyaima, in the quarter of the Lady Ngangbam, my own mother. They were a boisterous lot and we children saw them eating together noisily and cheerfully. They did not pay us much attention but they did not treat us badly either. This may have been because there were so many children. I was the one who was very inquisitive – and it was only me that my elder sister Princess Tamphasana would call to her side now and then. She would sit up in her bed and make dolls for me. She was very weak but her hands never stopped working. She used to knit and crochet beautifully, taking patterns from English pattern books. She was renowned for her skills, my elder sister Princess Tamphasana.
We thought our older maiden sisters were all very beautiful. They wore their hair in the manner of unmarried Meitei maidens. I saw only my mother the Lady Ngangbam take scissors to their hair. My sisters would say, ‘Will our royal mother please style our hair?’ The Lady Ngangbam was known for her hair styling and dressing skills. What with our shaved heads26 and being younger than all of them, we were never able to get near them. It was only when they wanted us to run their errands that they remembered us.
We often saw our mother Tampak and our older cousin Bhaskar Manisana’s first wife Bidhumukhi, joining in as friends in this circle of maidens. From time to time, we saw them learning to dance in the large pavilion known as the beithop in the maharani’s quarter. The Lady Ngangbam was a very good dancer. I would see my mother rising to her feet to teach them how to dance. In those days they decided who would be the principal dancer at the Raas, who would follow next, and who would hold the fan, and so on. But alas! Since being of royal blood did not necessarily make one a good dancer, or give a sense of rhythm, I would see the Lady Ngangbam, to the loud amusement of all, chiding my older sisters when they could not dance. And it was usually the maharani who was the principal dancer. Sometimes she might say to her maiden daughters, let this one lead the dance this time and bestow the honour, but it was just her saying so.
Not long ago, one of my friends asked me, ‘There were so many royal offices in your palace – like the Royal Choir Office and Royal Shaman Office. But was there a Royal Office for the Raas?’ I had replied, ‘I do not know, I never heard of one.’ But it dawned upon me as I was writing that there were three Raas at the temple to Lord Govinda – Kunja Raas, Maha Raas and Basanta Raas. It turned out that these three Raas were really organized by none other than the queen of the court, along with the senior princes and princesses of the royal lineage. The Royal Office turned out to be none other than the noblewomen of the palace. Therefore, in the reign of my sovereign father, the pavilion in the quarter of the maharani was the seat of the high culture’s rich Raas tradition as bequeathed by Manipur’s own king, Maharaja Bhagyachandra, and the seat of its purity and integrity turned out to be the Lady Ngangbam’s pavilion.
Today, I remember the princesses who gathered there. They were not just from the family of Maharaja Churachand. There were the daughters of the Divine King Maharaja Chandrakirti. There were princesses and granddaughters of Maharaja Narasingh. The most famed of Manipur’s noblewomen of the time came in clusters to gather at our pavilion. I often heard my mother say, and quietly instruct her personal attendants in the quarter, ‘Listen ladies, keep the pavilion neat and tidy, and arrange the seating properly. The princesses will arrive early as they have nothing better to do.’ The princesses in question were either the daughters or grand daughters of the kings of Manipur. The main ones were our royal aunts, the princesses Amusana, Khomdonsana, Ombisana, Phandengsana, Chandnisana, Kaminisana, Sengoisana and grandmother Ibemhal, the Maid of Lourembam, the grand-daughter of Maharaja Narasingh. And so my mother the Lady Ngangbam considered them extremely important. I remember my mother took great pains to ensure that no mistakes were made and no one was irked or offended.
And sure enough, the daughters and granddaughters of the sovereign kings of Manipur and the noblewomen would often arrive early at the pavilion of the Lady of Ngangbam. The clever and etiquette-savvy attendants of the quarter of the Lady Ngangbam would begin to wait on the princesses for the Lady Ngangbam was still to take her bath. Most of the senior princesses did not take part in the dance, but participated as the sutra27 singers. The respected great grandmother Ibechaobi, also known as Ibemhal, of the house of Lourembam, was the daughter of Princess Thabalsana, the daughter of Maharaja Narasingh. I think there were three or four sisters in all; they were all beautiful. Not merely fair, their complexion was that of leiren leihao blossoms. I vaguely remember grandmother Princess Thabalsana – she was very tall and very fair. So her daughters, my grandmother princesses, were also very fair. But the most distinguished and clever artist of them all was said to be great grandmother Ibemhal, the Lady Lourembam. The theatre artist Lourembam Kishwarjit is the grandson of my great grandmother the Lady Lourembam. And so I think that Narasingh, our monarch of old, might have been very handsome and fair of face as well.
My sister Angousana was never a part of the circle of my other pretty, fully tressed maiden sisters. Not only was she not in it, she was not allowed to participate. She was quite wild. The dark-skinned Angousana not only resembled Sovereign Father but also slept in her father’s bed. She was feared not only by the younger children but also by our unmarried sisters. We were afraid that she might hit us for no reason at all, while our maiden sisters feared that if they let her in, she might go back to our sovereign father and tell unreliable tales about them and cause trouble. People said of her, she is her father’s daughter, Musuksana the Sooty Princess. When this reached his ears, they say Sovereign Father said, ‘Why should my daughter be called Musuksana?’ And it was said that he named her Angousana, the Fair Princess. Whenever Sovereign Father attended a ritual or official function, he would take my sister, the dark-skinned Angousana, dressed in boy’s clothes, up with him in the royal howdah. She did everything my birthmother the Lady Ngangbam did not want her to do, and so we had no love lost for Angousana who, whether shooting, going on hunts, playing tennis or chess, followed our father wherever he went. I especially hated her. She was my next sibling and therefore she was my enemy. She was different from my other sisters. Of course when there are many children, there are always many different personalities. Only now, when my anger has abated, do I love her.