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Pauper Princess



PAUPER PRINCESS
Outlook weekly magazine (October 12, 1998)
By SHAMEEN AKTHAR in Ratnagri

What did the fey Burmese princess Fayas brood over as she paced before the
bare house built by her Indian husband? Did she reflect over the vanished
glory of her father Teeba, last king of Upper Burma who, despite being a
prisoner of the British, lived here regally, displaying a generosity that
bordered on extravagance? Did she wander if her munificence would shove her
only daughter Baisubai 'Tutu" into a morass of poverty? But Tutu, gnarled
with age- an estimated 105 years-is gifted with a stubborn, death-thwarting
life force. And so she sits rheumy-eyed in her shed house, awaiting the
Grim Reaper.

She certainly has no use for the heartening news that her grand father's
palace, where she spent a pampered childhood, will finally recapture its
lost burnish. Prof. R.A. Sathe, of Mumbai University's subcentre now housed
within the palace, says a recent understanding between India and Myanmar
ensures that while Myanmar will preserve the Mandalay house where the
British imprisoned Lakmanya Tilak for his inspiring 'Freedom is my birth
right' lines, Indian will maintain the Teeba residence in Ratnagiri. K. D.
Kawandkar, state director of archaeology, says the palace is now state
protested, following a Central directive. the subcentre will be rewarded
three acres near by for their Rs 9 Lakh clean-up of the derelict structure
that's to became a regional museum.

Misty-eyed locals, who remember the exquisite Fayas for her
open-handedness, call her daughter Tutu the Mother Teresa of Raynagiri. "No
offence to Mother Teresa, but Tutu is batter since she 's poor. If Tutu has
one roti, She share half," says Sadanand Salgaonker, a local. Her
slum-dweller existence and five offspring do not deter Tutu from adopting
several half-starved waifs. Her eldest son Chandu, born of Indian husband
Shankar Pawar, carries forward Teeba's tradition despite subsisting as a
mechanic. If he hears of any death in vicinity, he visits the
bereaved-whatever the hour-offering to the chores. " This is true royalty,"
observes Salgaonkar.

Chandu, however, doesn't view this as a Teeba inheritance. For him the
tradition ends with his mother. With her he'll bury memories of royalty
that now glints feebly through the mould on photographs scattered around
his shed, or are lost in the dust on the documents Tutu accumulated, trying
to retain a hold on sliver of land where her husband lived. Memories that
are frayed, even forgotten like the court papers of Tutu as she tried, for
her offspring's sake, to get 30 guntas of land promised by the Indian
government in the wake of the British departure.

Visitors from Burma drop in occasionally, nostalgic about their gentle king
who died in foreign land which has forgotten even his tomb. His large grave
lies forlorn in the nucleus of housing colony. Overgrown weeds smother it;
unaware residents fear such negligence can only breed vermin. Only two
plaques, in Burmese and English, sum up Teeba's history thus:
"In this tomb on 19th March 1919 were deposited the mortal remains of
Thebaw the last king of Upper Burma... deposed on the 1st December 1885 and
was removed to Ratnagiri where he died on 15th December 1918 at the age of
58. Also remains of Teik Supaa Gale Thebaw's minor queen who died in 1912
aged 50."

Tutu's melancholy turns to fond remembrance as she fixes her
cataract-misted gaze on the line-up of portraits from the past. Her grand
father is a young, unsmiling moustachioed man (Teeba was in his 30s when he
arrived) in his photograph; her mother a fair, pink-cheeked childwoman, in
painting.

Fayas was an innocent teenager when she fell in love with the
already-married, handsome palace servant, Gopal Sawant Shivrekar who, as
village headman and landed gentry' was no opportunist. She sneaked him,
through the heavily-latticed female quarters, right into her room. When her
pregnancy was discovered, she insisted on marrying him. Did she ever regret
the decision of her youth? One doesn't know. But she did over come her
self-imposed isolation and local ostracism, with her over whelming
generosity that ate into the Rs 300 privy purse, no paltry amount in
newly-independence India.

"I was just a child then but used to be absolutely fascinated by her,"
Salgaonkar recalls, on his trip down memory lane. "Her greatest pleasure
was distributing food amongst poor children. She'd have a beatific smile,
looking up at the sky, interrupting her sweet Burmese chanting, to talk to
some presence up there. I knew, through others believed she was mad, she
was praying to god. She matched her father in generosity, whose divine
pleasure it was to sell off his jewels to help the poor here."

As a child, Tutu was used to being driven around in the palace Ford by
Shankar Pawar who she later married). Says local BJP leader, C. K.
Parulekar, who had her father Shivrekar as client: " My grandfather, L.V.
Parulekar, then the government pleader, was not just his lawyer, but also
Teeba's friend. Teeba used to lend his car to our family. Seeing it, local
would prostrate themselves, such as their love for him. It was soukars
(brokers) who cheated him, buying for pittance the jewellery he sold to
sustain his large heartedness which created tension amongst three wives. He
had only two daughters. the first one married Teeba's lieutenant, an
Indian, and went off to Darjeeling."

The British, worried that the Kingdom of Burma would reclaim Teeba,
smuggled him into Ratnagri on the West coast in 1886. He was given just two
hours to pack up all he needed, and was secretly moved around on India,
before being settled in two bungalows here. The Teeba palace, an indulgence
the British allowed him, was built according to Teeba's specifications.
Perched on a 23 acres promontory overlooking the green haze of a
sea-fringed horizon, the palace was finished after several years in 1910,
with Teeba residing in it for just eight years. After his death, his
vestigial family was packed off to Myanmar. Fayas and later Tutu declined
the Myanmarese government's offer to return home. Faya's death, in 1950s,
was a grin affair when Burmese priests arrived to give her a royal
send-off. Her ashes still lie in the vaults of district collectorate.

Sathe recalls the detritus of negligence as the glass-paned palace doors
were reopened in 97. The insides were caked with pigeon droppings that
wouldn't be scrubbed away. The Italian coloured glass-panes had gone
missing, and damaged Burmese teak had, perforce, to be replaced by local
seasame. But the house that Teeba built-neither British, Indian nor
Burmese-but a strange amalgamation of all, retains his signature. Every
sea-facing wall is ventilated with coloured glass panes to catch the
glitter of the setting sun.

Several families here still own Teeba items-- furniture, stone-crusted
jewellery, still-clear Belgian mirrors, non-electric fans. One proud owner
shows off his corner table, worth Rs 3 lakh. But Tutu, being human, doesn't
command such priceless estimation. With her will be buried India's bond
with a gentle prisoner king whose generous legacy Ratnagiri still remembers.
-EOF-