Pauper Princess

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 wonder 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 grandfather'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 Lokmanya Tilak for his inspiring 'Freedom is my birthright' lines, India will maintain the Teeba residence in Ratnagiri. K.D. Kawadkar, state director of archaeology, says the palace is now state protected, following a Central directive. The subcentre will be rewarded three acres nearby for their Rs 9 lakh clean-up of the derelict structure that's to become a regional museum.

Misty-eyed locals, who remember the exquisite Fayas for her open-handedness, call her daughter Tutu the Mother Teresa of Ratnagiri. "No offence to Mother Teresa, but Tutu is better since she's poor. If Tutu has one roti, she shares half," says Sadanand Salgaonkar, 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 the vicinity, he visits the bereaved—whatever the hour—offering to do 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 and paintings scattered around his shed, or ar e lost in the dust on the documents Tutu accumulated, trying to retain a hold on the 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 a foreign land which has forgotten even his tomb. His large grave lies forlorn in the nucleus of a 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 cataractmisted gaze on the line-up of portraits from the past. Her grandfather 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 a 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 overcome her self-imposed isolation and local ostracism, with her overwhelming generosity that ate into the Rs 300 privy purse, no paltry amount in newly-independent 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, though 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, the then government pleader, was not just his lawyer, but also Teeba's friend. Teeba used to lend his car to our family. Seeing it, locals would prostrate themselves, such was their love for him. It was the soukars (brokers) who cheated him, buying for pittance the jewellery he sold to sustain his large-heartedness which created tension amongst his 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 then Kingdom of Burma would reclaim Teeba, smuggled him into Ratnagiri on the west coast in 1886. He was given just two hours to pack up all he needed, and was secretly moved around in 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-acre 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. Fayas' death, in the 1950s, was a grand affair when Burmese priests arrived to give her a royal send-off. Her ashes still lie in the vaults of the 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 glasspanes had gone missing, and damaged Burmese teak had, perforce, to be replaced by local sesame. 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, nonelectric 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.