Love-soaked history

Palace intrigue, romance and pride come together in this translation of a Manipuri classic.

At the best of times, translating a book could prove to be a challenge; doubly so, when you are attempting to translate a Sahitya Akademi winning novel by the renowned Manipuri author, the late Binodini Devi, who also happens to be your mother. Somi Roy has acquitted himself creditably in this mammoth effort, which acts as a record of Anglophone history.

Binodini, incidentally, returned her Padma Shri Award in 2001, when she heard that the boundaries of her state would be redrawn. The book starts with Binodini offering a dedication to her aunt, Princess Sanatombi and craving forgiveness for the “breach of courtesy” in taking her “royal name” in this historical novel, which involves the romance between the Princess and Lt Colonel Henry P Maxwell, who was the British representative of the then-subjugated Tibeto-Burmese kingdom of Manipur. This annexation is the backdrop to their love story, which Binodini ruminates over in the foreword of the original novel as to how the daughter of the deposed king, could “become the wife of the enemy”.

Whilst Somi might have translated, he almost seems to fade into the background, as the novel picks up. Somi writes that this was a very personal novel for Binodini, as her own father plays a very important role in the story. Binodini, after growing up in a privileged atmosphere in the palace, is exposed to leftist ideology in her Shillong college and then further goes on to become a humanist and artist, picking up Tagore’s values, when she goes to Shantiniketan to learn art.

The narrative moves back and forth, which is a bit tedious, especially when read in the digital format. Binodini picked up on the sketchiest of records in the court chronicles to weave her story and fictionalise it, taking great care not to reveal where reality ended and fiction began. Despite this sensibility, she did come under fire from members of her family, as the novel took Manipur by storm. The reason was not just the airing of what could be termed as the royal family’s dirty laundry, but also for harking back to 1891, which is seen as a most sensitive period in Manipur’s history, when the state is believed to have lost both its sovereignty and its cultural identity.

The day-to-day happenings of the palace are intriguing, as are the rules and the hierarchies that have to be followed. Despite this, Sanatombi is able to have her way by questioning the status quo even for things like the selection of jewellery for her marriage to Manikchand when she decries the heavy stuff saying, “Light ones for me”.

After the takeover of Manipur by the British, the romance between Sanatombi and the British representative, Maxwell unfolds. Sanatombi is perhaps able, for the first time, to understand the emotion of love, which she has never had the chance to experience earlier.