When Princess Met Subhadradi

Aunt Prema or Prema Mashima, as Ma used to address her, was one of Mamai, my paternal grandmother’s closest friends. She also happened to come from the Tripura royal family. Mamai had taught me to address Prema Mashima as Princess, a title the latter always cringed at and which I later learnt she truly held before the abolition of the Indian Privy Purse and royal titles. They had known each other since childhood and even after half a century, they never failed to bring out the little girl in the other.

Subhadradi too was one of Mamai’s closest friends but in a very different way. She had been Mamai’s maid for as long as I can remember. They shared an unspoken understanding that develops between an employee and her employer after many years of faithful service. I also suspect old age, widowhood and the wounds of life had brought them even closer.

I can’t remember Subhadradi actually ever working at our place. Yes, she would at times make Mamai’s bed, prepare a paan and even occasionally fold her clothes but she never scrubbed, cleaned or cooked like the other maids in the house. However, what she did most of the time was blabber this preposterous story of being an aristocratic lady who had never even poured herself a glass of water till the 1947 Partition reduced her to destitution.

Of course, even at a very young age I had heard horror tales of the Partition and the subsequent bloody mayhem on both sides of the border, including those involving the extended family. However, never had I or anyone else around heard a story of such deprivation and it sounded extremely implausible.

Moreover, I had at times seen Subhadradi do dishes at a neighbor’s and my young mind couldn’t envisage that frail woman in the tattered sari on her haunches scrubbing hard at another family’s dirty dishes as an elegant wealthy lady. People used to incessantly taunt her and call her names. In fact, I had even caught Ma in a foul mood snap at Subhadradi and call her a liar.

One afternoon, a month or so after my sixth birthday, I returned from school to find Ma decked in fancy silk and the aroma of the special three layered pudding – the signs of a guest for lunch. I was told that Princess was coming for lunch. As I could make out from Mamai and Ma’s conversation, this was extremely uncharacteristic of Princess – she never paid anyone a visit before late afternoon. To add to Mamai’s tensions, a visibly uncomfortable Subhadradi declared she was going home early on grounds of feeling unwell. Ma rightly pointed out that she’d feel even worse in her dingy shanty home and it would be better if she slept it off at our house.

I was still working at the pudding, when Mamai called for Subhadradi. It had so happened that Mamai had been raving about Subhadradi’s special paan to Princess for a while. Surprisingly, in all the years that Subhadradi worked for Mamai, Princess had never met her. But then Princess always visited in the late afternoon long after Subhadradi had left. Subhadradi came in with her head uncharacteristically buried in her chest. Suddenly, Princess stood up, walked to Subhadradi and embraced her in the regal way that society ladies did at that time and they exchanged pleasantries. The day then continued as usual; Subhadradi returned with the neatly folded paans. No questions were asked, no explanations given. Ever since then, no one in the household ever heard Subhadradi’s blabber again.

Even a six year old had understood that Princess, with dignity and grace had just corroborated Subhadradi’s story.

I learnt two significant lessons of life that afternoon. Firstly, to lend a patient ear to and trust even the most outlandish stories as a person already savaged by the cruelties of life might just need that to carry on. Secondly, to respect a person’s dignity by refraining from all embarrassing questions. Every day when I read about or watch educated men and women air their dirty linen in public, I remember that afternoon spent in the company of three women of another time and the power of words that remained unspoken.