Our Elsewheres: Excerpted from ‘Our Madhopur Home’ by Tripurari Sharan

My ancestors came from the Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh to the village of Ramanpur and settled there. My grandmother’s grandmother told me that our forefathers Bakhtor Pandey and Bahoran Pandey held lowly jobs with the British government.

The Englishmen were quite pleased with these two, which was why the brothers were entrusted in course of time with the work of collecting revenues from peasants and depositing them in the treasury. This was the period between the enactment of the Permanent Settlement and the revolt of 1857.

Subsequently, as a reward for keeping the rulers of the country happy, they earned the title of agent. There was no looking back after this. In just a few years the brothers established a stranglehold over Ramanpur and its adjoining areas.

The government added several villages to their jurisdiction. Two separate houses were built for women, and, a short distance away on a high terrace, a magnificent mansion for men was constructed. Sheds for horses, elephants, and cows stood near the doorstep. There were plenty of workers and clerks, and no lack of servants to perform menial tasks. The residents didn’t lift a finger when it came to doing anything.

My great-grandmother said everyone lived like royalty. There used to be a servant for every individual task. Gradually our landholding grew and began to be called Ramanpur Estate. The people on the estate were devoutly religious, and they also believed in untouchability. They would not even accept a glass of water from others.

Summer or winter, all the maids and servants had to bathe before entering the house to cook for the residents. Onions and garlic could not even be taken inside the kitchen. The ladies of the house did not cook, each of them had three or four maids to do their work for them. There were chandeliers inside the rooms. Instead of today’s electric fans, punkahs of cloth and wood hung from the ceiling of every room, with someone available twenty-four hours a day to pull on them.

My great-grandfather’s great-grandfather was so religious that people would say his dhoti was dried in heaven. After his bath the servant would wash the dhoti, fling it in the air, and close his eyes. The dhoti would rise into the sky.

In the evening the servant would hold his hands out, palm upwards, and make an appeal, ‘Maharaj needs his dhoti,’ whereupon it would fall into his hands from somewhere above. My grandmother used to tell me all this family lore, I cannot tell how true it was.

The king got married and had a son, after which his wife passed away, but he did not marry again even though in those days men did marry a second time if their wives died young. The son was named Raghunandan Pandey. He was a greatly fortunate man.

It was the age of the East India Company. After Permanent Settlement was established, it became common knowledge that peasants who did not pay their taxes would have their tenancies terminated by landowners. In the same way, estates which did not deposit the revenue already determined by the Company would be auctioned. Pandey-ji acquired several such small estates in auctions in his time, and his status rose by the day in the eyes of the Company.

Raghunandan Pandey married three times. From his first marriage he had a son and a daughter, after which his wife died. Two more marriages followed, but the wives died not too many years apart from each other. Both his children were brought up by the maids. Back in those days, women who fostered children were accorded the same respect as mothers. One of the stepmothers did in fact live for several years after her marriage, but she had separate living quarters, as well as a different cook and maids.

The glory of our Ramanpur court remained intact in this manner throughout the nineteenth century. A new house was built in this period, in 1875. The stone for it was brought from Mirzapur, and all the wood, from Assam. The walls were made with brick dust and limestone. It was a beautiful building of its times, but the entire structure was flattened in the earthquake of 1934 and could not be reconstructed. Its remains can still be seen.

My great grandfather Padamdev Narayan Pandey was married with great fanfare in the princely state of Parsa. My great-grandmother used to say that a number of English officers were part of the groom’s entourage. The celebrations went on for four days.

Such a splendid wedding ceremony had never been witnessed in any princely state in the nineteenth century. When the bride came home, five maids in glittering saris waited to welcome her. Her palanquin stood at our Shiva temple, where the maids waited with a pitcher each.

The pitchers were filled with gold coins, and the bride bowed her head in reverence to the deity in the temple, after which she sat in the palanquin and was brought to the door of the house, where a ritual was performed and the ceremony of overturning a basket—painted with wedding scenes—with her foot was completed. Only after this did the bride and groom enter the nuptial room, after which the wedding ceremonies were said to have been concluded. 

Tripurari Sharan is an author, a former senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, and currently serves as the State Chief Information Commissioner of Bihar. He is the author of several books, including Mera Cheif Guest and Paros Ka Radio.

Excerpted with permission from Simon & Schuster India