A personal journey through Puthia Palace and the life of Maharani Hemanta Kumari Devi, where history, architecture, memory, and imagination meet in one of Bengal’s most remarkable heritage sites.
I have always fallen in love rather easily. Not only with people, but with stories, places, books, old houses, paintings, rivers, and forgotten corners of the world. Some places remain destinations; others become companions. Long before I ever visited Puthia, I had been reading about it. I knew of the palace with its huge columns, the temple complex, the ponds, the queens, and the history of one of Bengal’s most influential zamindari estates. Whenever I came across a photograph of Puthia Palace, I would pause. Whenever I found an article about its history, I would read it.
There was no practical reason for this fascination. Rajshahi is full of beautiful places, Bengal is full of extraordinary stories, and yet Puthia occupied a special place in my imagination. Last year, when work brought me once again to Rajshahi, I finally made sure that I went. I told myself I was simply visiting a historical site I had long admired. What I did not know then was that I would leave carrying something far more personal. Only then I encountered the woman Rani Hemanta Kumari Devi.
The first thing that struck me was, of course, the beauty. The palace rose before me with its elegant façade and long verandahs, carrying traces of another age. The stained-glass windows caught the sunlight. The great Shiva Temple dominated the skyline. The Ahnik Mandir stood quietly, almost modestly, among structures far grander than itself. The ponds reflected the sky with a serenity that seemed untouched by time. Everywhere I looked there was evidence of care, ambition, artistry, and devotion. Yet what moved me was not simply the architecture.
Beautiful buildings exist all over the world. What I felt here was a strange affection, as though the place had been waiting patiently for me to arrive. I remember standing beside the Ahnik Mandir and feeling something I could not properly explain. The terracotta stories carved into its walls seemed less like decoration and more like memory. Even then, I knew I would return.
This year, during another work trip to Rajshahi, I found myself making time for Puthia once again. Some places satisfy our curiosity. Others deepen it. Returning to the palace felt less like revisiting a monument and more like renewing an acquaintance. As I walked through the estate, I realized that what drew me back was no longer only the architecture. Increasingly, my thoughts returned to the woman behind much of what I was seeing: Maharani Hemanta Kumari Devi.
I have admired many historical women. Bengal has produced countless remarkable daughters whose stories deserve to be told. Yet for some reason, this time it was Hemanta Kumari who occupied my imagination. Perhaps it was because she was both extraordinary and human. Perhaps it was because she built rather than conquered. Or perhaps it was because every column, staircase, pond, temple, and courtyard seemed to carry some trace of her presence.
The history of Puthia stretches back centuries into the Mughal period, when land grants gradually evolved into one of the most significant zamindari estates in Bengal. Over generations, the rulers of Puthia accumulated wealth and influence, but unlike many estates whose riches vanished without leaving a mark, the rulers of Puthia built. They built temples whose terracotta panels still tell stories today. They excavated ponds that continue to mirror the sky. They commissioned roads, residences, and public works that shaped the landscape around them.
Walking through Puthia is like walking through layers of accumulated devotion and ambition. Every structure seems to belong to a larger vision, one that extended beyond individual lifetimes. The palace may be the most visible symbol of that vision today, but it stands within a much older story that began long before Hemanta Kumari Devi was born.
By the nineteenth century, the estate had already produced remarkable leaders, among them Maharani Saratsundari Devi, whose administrative abilities earned admiration throughout Bengal. It was into this legacy that Hemanta Kumari Devi entered. Yet history was not immediately kind to her. She was widowed before she turned eighteen. Whenever I read that fact, I find myself pausing.
It is easy to read such details quickly and move on, but behind those few words lies an entire world of grief. Nineteenth-century Bengal was not a forgiving place for widows. Society often expected them to retreat from life, to shrink their ambitions, to accept limitation as destiny. Many women had no choice. Hemanta Kumari Devi chose differently. Rather than allowing sorrow to define her, she transformed it into responsibility. Over time she emerged as an administrator, benefactor, and patron whose influence reached far beyond the walls of her home.
The palace that visitors admire today was commissioned by Hemanta Kumari Devi in 1895.
Yet what moves me is not the fact that she built it. It is the fact that she lived through everything that came before it. We often admire monuments while forgetting the lives that made them possible. Behind every grand structure stands a human being who worried, grieved, hoped, failed, persevered, and continued. Hemanta Kumari supported educational institutions, charitable initiatives, and public welfare projects. She managed responsibilities that would have challenged many men of her era. Yet the more I learned about her, the less interested I became in dates and achievements.
Instead, I found myself wondering about ordinary things. What did she see when she looked from the balcony? What thoughts accompanied her during evening walks through the verandah? What kind of woman emerged from so much loss and still found the strength to build?
It was late afternoon when those questions finally followed me up to the balcony. The sunlight had softened. Below me stood the Shiva Temple and the Rangamancha. Beyond them stretched the ponds and trees of the estate. A gentle breeze moved through the corridor, and the palace seemed suspended between day and night. Standing there, I discovered that history could take me only so far. It could tell me what happened. It could not tell me how it felt. And so, quite naturally, imagination stepped in.
I could see Hemanta Kumari Devi climbing the same staircase I had climbed. I could see her walking slowly along the verandah, her white sari moving softly across the floor. The coloured light from the stained-glass windows touched the walls as she passed. She did not appear to me as a queen from a textbook. She appeared as a woman carrying a lifetime of responsibilities with quiet grace.
I followed Rani Hemanta Kumari Devi through the palace in my mind. As if she paused beside a column and looked toward the Shiva Temple. Perhaps she turned toward the Ahnik Mandir, the little temple that continues to draw me more strongly than all the others. I imagined the Lady stopping there every morning before the demands of the day began. The terracotta panels glowed softly in the first light of dawn. Temple bells echoed across the estate. Somewhere servants were beginning their work, priests were preparing offerings, and the household was waking.
Yet for a few moments Hemanta Kumari Devi belonged only to herself and her prayers. Later she descended toward the Rani Ghat. I stood there too, looking at the water, and found myself imagining another scene. Women of the household surrounding her. Voices carried softly through the morning air. The stone steps still cool beneath bare feet. The palace waiting above. History cannot tell me whether any of this happened exactly as I imagine it. Yet the place itself seems to invite such dreams.
As evening deepened, the palace became quieter. The shadows lengthened. The ponds turned into mirrors. I imagined Hemanta Kumari once more standing on the balcony, looking across everything she had helped preserve and build. The young widow had become a Maharani. The woman whom circumstance might have diminished had instead become larger than her circumstances. Looking at her in my imagination, I finally understood the pull I had been trying to explain since my first visit.
It was never only the architecture. It was never only the history. It was the story of resilience made visible in brick, water, terracotta, and stone. The palace is beautiful because of its columns and verandahs, but it becomes meaningful because of the woman who walked among them.
One life feels too short for such magnificence. Too short to build it, too short to inhabit it, and perhaps too short even to understand it fully. Sometimes, standing in places like Puthia, I feel that human beings do not live in a single lifetime. We leave fragments of ourselves behind. We remain in the things we create, in the people we inspire, in the stories that continue to be told after we are gone. Perhaps Hemanta Kumari Devi lives on in the palace she built.
Perhaps she lives in the terracotta stories that still cling to the temple walls. Perhaps she lives wherever another woman encounters her story and feels understood by it. Maybe someone before me stood in these courtyards and felt the same affection. Maybe someone after me will stand on that balcony, look across the estate in the late afternoon light, and feel it too. When I left Puthia, I did not feel that I was saying goodbye. I felt that I was leaving a conversation unfinished, and that somewhere among the temples, ponds, verandahs, and fading pink columns, Hemanta Kumari Devi was still quietly part of it, waiting for me to return.
