Days of the Raj

Books, it has been said, enlighten lives like no other. They often conjure up a differnt world of vivid color & images that not even movies can surpass. A world where one can see through the eyes of the protogonist and live through a thousand situations which one would not even have dreamed of. Atleast books have this magical effect on me.

The last book I read was Wicked Women of the Raj by Coralie Younger. Here is an apt summary from Indiaclub: An unputdownable factual account of the zenana world of the rajas and sultans of India, concentrating on the firangi bahus and begums of this veiled world of myths and folklores. This book gives us the stories of twenty different European women who broke society’s rules to marry the heathen Indian princes.

Who were these women? Were they gold-diggers, or hopeless romantics hoping to enact their own Cinderella fairy-tale? Did they live happily ever after? Set against the backdrop of India’s independence struggle, the book has a delicious and potent mix of flavours – the end of the British Raj and the downfall of the pompous and extravagant Indian aristocracy.

*******************************

While the entire book is really fascinating what left an undelible imprint on my mind was a passage from this book. Am reproducing the same here with the hope it recreates the same effect for you that it had on me. :)

The raja's and maharaja's lifestyles were the stuff of make-believe: Aladdin's Cave & King Solomin's MInes rolled into one. Peter Pan's magic could never have conjured up such a world; a world that today even the princes look back upon in wonder. The maharajah of Indore could sink his arms up to the elbows in his treasure chest of diamonds; he was the possessor of peerless diamond earrings of 46 and 44 carats each. The maharajah of Baroda owned a seven-string pearl necklace estimated in 1903 to be worth seven million dollors. the nizam of Hyderbad own the 227-carat Nizam diamond and the Jacob diamond of 174 carats, plus a gold coin called the Jahangir Nazarana that weighed even kilograms. The legendary Baroda Royal Pearl carpet offered for sale in Geneva in 1989 was conservatively valued at thirty one million dollars.
The princes kept Rolls Royce in business. It custom-designed the car in every conceivable shape, material and colour. There were gold-and silver-plated models upholstered in the finest silk brocades and woven with pure gold and silver zari.
When the Maharaja Jagatjit Singh invited his French girlfriend Germain Pelligreno out to India for the cold season, he chartered an entire P&O liner for her comfort. On her arrival in Bombay she found an entire train fitted out with luxurious interiors to take her, its sole passenger, up to the maharajah's wedding-cake like palace in Kapurthala that was fashioned after the palace at Versailles.
Princely India was the vision splendid. From the prince's royal ateliers came the finest flowering of indian paintings, sculpture, textile, dance, architecture and music. Without royal patrons, he artistic heritage of India would never had flourished so extensively.

Wow.

Here's my New Year prayer that India regain its lost glory (atleast some of it)and get back to being this prosperous once again.