His and Her Stories

One evening, I happened to overhear some ‘female-talk’ in the powder room. In my defence, I wasn’t paying any attention, until the sing song tone of a certain voice made it impossible to not listen. She said, “In all this rush, I forgot my brush!”  

I could not see her, but those words formed an image in my mind. A socialite, I thought. For, to them, a bad hair day is the biggest catastrophe, and there is a nasal tone of helplessness in all their voices. Anyone, silly enough to presume they need help, should take a lesson from the story of the Spider and the Fly. 

The King in Exile

When I stepped out, my eyes automatically searched for the owner of the voice, resting on a middle aged lady in an expensive looking sari. The younger women with her said, “You shouldn’t be worrying about your hair, you look perfect!”  She said that with an emphasis on the word ‘perfect’. I walked away before the conversation went into grave hair details.  

I smiled at a few familiar faces. Some of them, made an appearance at every social event. I wondered how they had the energy to dress up every single day. I was at a book launch, and though it was the author’s maiden book, I decided to go because I have been hiding away for too long, and I did not want to be forgotten. 

Before the launch, I met her for a brief couple of minutes. Sudha Shah told me that the book was a story waiting to be told. She explained how after reading Amitav Gosh’s The GlassPalace, she had wondered what happened to the exiled royal family. Impressive - I had read that book too, but I’d never thought about the Burmese King and if I had, I did not bother to find out. She then spoke of how this thought became an obsession, how she had to travel extensively to meet people and the characters of the book, now her closest friends. And then came the big one - The King in Exile is all facts and no fiction! 

All that glitters is GOLD

The official launch began with a slide show. In Burma, she said, royalty lived in golden palaces – literally. They ate on utensils made of gold, brushed their hair with wooden combs set in pure gold, inlayed with rubies and the palace itself was a cluster of buildings gilded in gold. The king was God’s representative on earth and he lived in great style. Until, the British came. 

King and his family is exiled to the Brick House in Ratnagiri, India

The book is in three parts - King Thibaw in Burma, his exiled life in Ratnagiri and the story of his children and their families. Some no longer acknowledge their Burmese connections, living and working in India in dire poverty. Others have moved back to Burma, but with the end of monarchy, they are simply private citizens. 

I listened to the stories the author had to say about her meetings with the family… how the great grandson living in Burma requested her to get him Shimla apples, because he has heard his grandmother talk about them, how the youngest child born in this lineage, looks Burmese, even when her mother and grandmother has none of the characteristic Mongolian features… her experiences that spanned across seven years, that ultimately became the book.  

His grave in Ratnagiri is unmarked, and next to him rests his daughter

A lot of research, understanding and scanning has gone into the writing The King in Exile. And though I have just started reading it, I am completely bowled over by the kind of work that has gone into crafting this. 

Thinking back, ‘rush’ and ‘brush’ had rhymed. I should have guessed that it was not a co-incidence. 

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