I am neither a republican nor a monarchist. I am merely a curious columnist, perennially, if frenetically, in quest of events, issues and individuals to expatiate on. It is not merely in that capacity that I had my eyes riveted on the TV screen on all the days on which the BBC was going to town with its coverage of the Diamond Jubilee of the British Monarch, “Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, as she is officially known.

I had another qualification as well: I had actually set my eyes on the Queen at close quarters and had even shaken hands with her and partaken of the Royal feast on the same table as hers. That was in 1980, on the occasion of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (or CHOGM, for short, which the irreverent expanded as “Chaps Holidaying On Government Money”!) at Melbourne, Australia.

Indira Gandhi had just been elected Prime Minister, after the ignominious collapse of the Janata Government like a house of cards, and led the delegation in which she included me as a member (and asked me to stay back for a week or so to negotiate the purchase of one-and-a-half million tonnes of wheat from the Australian Wheat Council to replenish the fast depleting buffer stock at home).

As the Head of the Commonwealth, the Queen presents herself in her Royal yacht, Britannia, wherever the CHOGM is held, and gives a ceremonial dinner to delegations of all the participating countries with due pomp and pageantry, and with the Royal Orchestra playing on the deck, to boot. The invitation led to a grave crisis insofar as the Indian delegation was concerned and a council of war convened in the hotel where it was staying.

SEALED LIPS

How exactly should the members comport themselves when they were introduced to the Queen? To put it starkly: Should they curtsy or show any other form of obeisance like, bending and bowing, or should they just stand erect and nonchalantly (to demonstrate their hailing from a “Sovereign, Democratic, Socialist, Secular Republic”) extend their hands for shaking? Should they address her as “Your Majesty” or just simply as “Madam”?

What do you think the grim-faced members of the Indian delegation under the leadership of Indira Gandhi ultimately decided on what to observers, and certainly, to me, seemed an issue of war-and-peace, if not life-and-death? Well, I am the only surviving member and my lips are tightly sealed by the Official Secrets Act! But, like what Maulana Abul Kalam Azad did, I will leave an account to be opened after 100 years for posterity at least to know.

The Queen patiently listened to the outpourings of members eagerly thrusting themselves on her. And patience she needed in plenty. Although the language in which all of them spoke was purported to be English, even the delegation members could not make head or tail of what was being said because of the bewildering variety of accents, enunciation, pronunciation and usages. For her, the whole scene must have been reminiscent of the Tower of Babel! No wonder, she kept smiling, but silent, all the time.

“EXTREMELY FUNNY”

Okay, the impression of the Queen that I have carried from that time was of a rather grand-motherly person of solemn mien and reticent disposition. I now find it shattered to smithereens, thanks to the revelations of no less exalted a dignitary than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

In all his one-to-one meetings with her (as the ‘the Defender of the Faith' and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England), he says, he found in the Queen “someone who can be friendly, who can be informal, who can be extremely funny in private — and not everybody appreciates just how funny she can be — who is quite prepared to tease and to be teased…”. Well I never!

I thought the $1.8-billion Diamond Jubilee extravaganza would have revived the never-too-far-below-the-surface republican resentment against the monarchy. On the contrary, a poll on the verge of the bash found 79 per cent of Britons for it, not minding its total (including security and travel) estimated annual cost of nearly $300 million. (As against this, India's Rashtrapathi Bhavan budget is around four million dollars).

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