The Dancer and the Raja (13 page)

They stopped in Egypt; then England, France, and, finally, the United States. The raja attended the London wedding of the Duke of York without his wife, who remained in their suite at the Savoy Hotel—his second home, as he would call it—relieving her boredom with gin fizz, a drink that began to be popular at the time. One day later, from one of the suite's balconies, they were able to see a demonstration in the street in favor of the independence of Ireland, which reminded the raja of “the artificial agitation that has begun recently in India at the orders of the Congress Party,” as he wrote in his diary. “These demonstrations remind me of a bottle of soda water which, when opened, is strong, almost immediately loses gas and then becomes insipid.” He was wrong, but at the time he was so sure of his position that he confused his desires with reality.

In England, Rani Kanari was always disguised as a servant, but then, once they had crossed the English Channel, they relaxed as she took on her role as wife more and more often, dressing then as the most elegant of European women.

17

France was the highlight of the journey. The young raja was predisposed to enjoy it because he had read a lot about the country of the Enlightenment, the Sun King, and Napoleon, a character who had always fascinated him. Furthermore, he was a great lover of architecture, like all Indian monarchs, for whom the building of palaces, buildings, and monuments was a way of immortalizing themselves. In spite of having arrived with a lot of information, the reality dazzled him more than he could have foreseen. Paris seduced him immediately: the beauty of its monuments, the width of its avenues, the design of its parks, the jewelry shops in the Place Vendôme, the tearooms, the variety theaters … The luxury, good taste, and refinement of the French style seemed to him somewhat superior to what he had known until then. Next to it London seemed gray, industrial, boring, and ugly. In his eyes, France shone. And Versailles was the most dazzling star. He wanted to go back there day after day, whether it was sunny or wet, to admire the views and the layout of the gardens of a brilliant landscaper called Le Nôtre; to walk along the Hall of Mirrors, the symbol of the power of an absolute monarch, with ceilings twelve meters high and mirrors of an exceptional size; to feel intimidated by the one hundred and twenty meters of the Hall of Battles, depicting scenes from the armed conflicts that have made up the history of France; to contemplate some of the three thousand paintings in the historic gallery, the greatest history museum in the world; to gaze at the marquetry in the king's apartments, at the brocades, woven and embroidered with gold thread; the Opéra; the stables; and the fountains and statues, the marble fireplaces, the bas-reliefs, the stuccos, the gold leaf, and the wood and marble floors. If France had captivated him, Versailles was love at first sight. It had everything that could dazzle a prince of the Orient: grandeur, beauty, pomp, and a sense of history.

That was when Jagatjit decided to build a new palace in Kapurthala inspired by that same architecture. It would be his private homage to a country and culture that he now admired more than Britain. Besides, it would be an elegant and subtle way of getting at the English, so imbued with their racial and cultural superiority, and of doing something that no other prince had ever done.

Since he spoke French fluently, he felt completely at ease when it came to getting in touch with the best-known architects. Alexandre Marcel, who was at the head of a famous studio responsible for the Hotel Crillon and the Military School, among many other prestigious projects, and who felt very attracted to the East, was enthusiastic about the idea of making a small replica of Versailles with touches of the Tuileries Palace on the plains of the Punjab. Above all, after the raja informed him he would have unlimited funds to include all the latest technical advances, such as central heating, hot and cold running water in the one hundred and eight bedrooms with en suite bathrooms that he planned to build, along with electric lifts, roofs made of slate that would have to be imported from Normandy, and a lot more.
⁶
Although it was impossible to outdo the size and grandness of the palace in the neighboring state of Patiala, at least Kapurthala would compete with it in beauty and originality.

The fact is that, in Paris, the tall, plump raja who was always elegantly dressed and who had fabulous projects in mind, began to arouse great curiosity. His love of shopping—he acquired Cartier watches ten at a time—and the orders he made at Boucheron, the jeweler's, did not go by unnoticed. And not unnoticed either were his turquoise or salmon-pink silk turbans, which evoked the splendor of the East at a time when Asia was in vogue. The whole of France thrilled at the amazing discoveries of the temples in Angkor in the French colony of Cambodia. Orientalists were the stars of painting. The explorations in Indochina set the people's imagination ablaze. At a time when Asia occupied a place of honor in the fantasy of the French, suddenly a person of formidably exotic appearance turned up in Paris, able to speak in very elaborate French not only about his life, his country, and his grandiose dream of building a Versailles in India, but also about the merits of Napoleon or the advantages and disadvantages of driving a Dion Bouton or a Rolls-Royce. The raja was a great success, with the facility he possessed for social relations, his friendliness, his culture, his wealth, and his fine education.

His love story with France would last all his life. It was a love much more faithful and long-lasting than he would ever have with a woman. In France he felt completely free, without the obligations and duress of the British Raj. In France no one really knew the limits of his power, or the friction and humiliations he put up with from the English when they would not countenance all his whims. In France he was treated as though he were a real sovereign, and that appealed to his vanity, while in England, however rich he might be, he was a make-believe king. Just one more among the myriad Indian princes. The fact that he spoke French well made him different from all the other princes and would open the doors of a country and a culture that would welcome him with open arms. A saying began to be popular in Europe, and it clearly reflected the legend that was being woven around his person: “You are richer than the raja of Kapurthala.” Among the princes of India, he was far from being the richest. But he knew how to surround himself with an aura that made it look like that and which would make him popular.
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One of his great merits, thanks to his excellent knowledge of the language, was to get the name of Kapurthala on the map. But his greatest success would consist of the fact that, after many years and thanks to his numerous journeys, he would end up being the symbol of India in Europe. That was not at all bad for the prince of a tiny state, who only deserved a thirteen-cannon salute!

The fact that on occasions he traveled with his wife in disguise would arouse even more sympathy among the aristocratic French families, who received them in their mansions and castles, and who were very amused by the idea of a prince who used such tricks. After a tour of the châteaux of the Loire valley, they returned to Paris, where the days went by taking tea in the cafés in the Bois de Boulogne; visits in the mornings to the jewelry shops in the rue de la Paix; going shopping in the big Bon Marché stores; ransacking the Pinaud perfume factory (“I came out of there poorer, but richer from the acquisition of a great variety of perfumes,” he wrote in his diary); interviews with Charles Worth, the demiurge of Parisian fashion, the inventor of
prêt-à-porter
and the first fashion designer to put his label on his dresses; attending a concert in the Trocadero Palace or dining with the princess of Chimay at D'Armonville's, the most luxurious restaurant in the capital. He also visited the museums and art galleries. In the waxworks museum, one of his companions, Dr. Sadiq Ali, sat down to rest on a bench for a few minutes. When he changed position, a group of visitors began to scream: they had thought he was a figure.

But not all was frivolity in his visits. The raja would also set aside several afternoons to go the National Library, where he would stand in ecstasy before its more than three million volumes, and where he would patiently examine the collection of works in Sanskrit. He also visited the Pasteur Institute and had the good fortune to meet its founder: “He is an old man who is half-paralyzed and walks with the aid of a stick. He was kind enough to explain his system to me as he showed me his laboratories, entirely funded by donations. We examined dangerous germs under powerful microscopes. When we said goodbye, I promised he would receive a substantial donation from me, apart from what he already receives from the government of India. I want Kapurthala to take part in European progress in science.”

The next stage of the journey was the crossing to New York, which they made in six days on board the
Paris
. Here he came into contact with American passengers, “who never tired of explaining their superiority over the stagnating European monarchies.” In New York, the Kapurthala delegation aroused such curiosity that he was followed in all his movements by the local press: “They say I have fifty-five wives, and that the purpose of my visit is to add an American woman to the list. It is also imagined that I smoke gigantically fat cigars and drink champagne all day long. We laughed a lot at these details, written in all innocence and with no intention of giving any offence.”

Chicago had invested enormous sums of money in the Universal Exhibition, the most outstanding of all those held up to then. It was the first time that the United States surprised the world with such a display, which already augured its future power. In the six months it was open, it would be visited by twenty-seven million people, which represented half the total population of the country. The place looked like an enchanted kingdom: superb white buildings, standing among lakes and parks, housed everything the world could offer in the fields of the arts and sciences. There was even a flying machine and a submarine, which impressed the Indians greatly. Received with all the honors, they made a tour in two boats, one with the raja, Colonel Massy, and the finance minister, and the other with the rest, including Rani Kanari in disguise. They were finally acclaimed by a crowd of over fifty thousand people who had gathered for the occasion. “An Oriental monarch has visited us,” the
Chicago Daily Tribune
reported sarcastically on August 16, 1893, “his long gowns and turban shine with barbaric splendor. He was accompanied by what are probably his slaves and warriors, who waved peacock feathers with one hand while with the other they caressed their silver swords. From the balcony of the Administration building, Colonel Massy, the representative of English supremacy, raised a glass of white wine, and in the name of the Indian monarch, toasted the health of our people, who do not know what a king is. It was a picturesque visit, full of colour and noise, of a king from the
Arabian Nights
who came to see the cream of Western civilization.”

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Alexandre Marcel would pass into the history of French architecture for the Maulévrier Oriental park, which he designed in the city of Anjou, considered to be an excellent example of a Japanese garden.

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Years later, the Belgian cartoonist Hergé used him for inspiration for one of his characters in the famous Tintin series.

18

When the raja and his retinue returned to India, they were met by the military secretary of the governor of Bombay as representative of the viceroy, but Rani Kanari stayed disguised as a boy and remained incognito. The journey had not changed her as much as her husband, who was already thinking about his next escapade, because he had been fascinated by everything he had discovered in Europe and the United States. For Kanari it had not been such an exciting trip; first because she was forced to hide her presence all the time, which at first she felt was like a game, but later became very boring. And second, because the fact that she did not speak either English or French and had to stay in hiding so much of the time had prevented her from making friends, establishing relationships of her own, or soaking up the atmosphere. She had remained within the closed circle of the Indian retinue, where she felt out of place because she was the only woman. In fact, she had never felt more alone than during the long afternoons spent in the hotel suites, waiting for the raja to come back with wonderful tales of a world that she could not, and would never, understand. She was sufficiently clear thinking to realize that she did not live up to her husband's aspirations, and that she could never share them. That frustration caused attacks of melancholy, and to fight them off she would use a recently discovered weapon: first gin fizzes and then dry martinis, which would become her favorite drinks for the rest of her life. Gradually, without realizing it, the princess rescued from the Kangra valley by a Sikh king would slip into the endless tunnel of alcoholism.

The raja wished to put all his enthusiasm for the West into his state; as soon as he returned he got in touch with the authorities in order to build a telephone exchange and a system of drains in the city, to set up electric lighting in the streets, and to establish education for girls in the schools. The Political Department welcomed the raja's enthusiasm, but reminded him that little could be done if he continued with that pace of expenditure and continued to be away from Kapurthala so much. They reminded him that for years he had spent the four summer months in the mountains and that he had just made a journey abroad of almost a year. But these reprimands did no good: the raja did not change his lifestyle or projects at all. He delayed financing the telephone until 1901 and began the work on drains and lighting only in the area immediately around his palaces. The street lighting would wait until the building of his new palace was completed, as that was now his star project. In private he complained that the Political Department did not value his contributions to the development of Kapurthala and interfered too much in his private life. When all was said and done, he had paid for the first electric power station out of his own pocket. It worked on coal and only at set times and gave his city the honor of being the first in the Punjab to have electricity. Not only did he like to go to Europe, but he also tried hard to bring the Old Continent to Kapurthala.

But the raja, who by then had slimmed down and now cut a splendid figure, was not prepared to stagnate in his own little world. He knew he could count on the valuable assistance of his ministers and that his presence was not required for the daily affairs of state. He was in the flower of youth and wanted to regain everything stolen from him by his obesity. He continued to travel round India, and in the same year he took another two wives, also of Rajput origin. Not to speak of the new concubines. As his harem grew, so did the number of children he had. One after another his wives fell pregnant, with Rani Kanari being the last. In 1896, she gave birth to a baby boy called Kamaljit, the youngest of the family, who would end up being known as Karan. At the beginning of the century, the raja, who had had so much difficulty in fathering his first child, was the proud father of four “official” children, whom he rapidly taught French and English with the idea of sending them to school in Europe and so have the excuse to go and visit them every year. The children of his concubines also got a good education, but they were not recognized officially.

His desire to travel was insatiable. An official report calculated that a fifth of the time that had passed since his investiture as raja had been spent outside the state. He was authorized to make a journey in May 1900 on the condition that he was not absent abroad again for a period of five years. “He is very extravagant,” said the report, “and in 1899–1900 he has spent a fourth of the State's income on himself and his visits to Europe. Lord Lansdowne has reprimanded him severely for his lack of interest in affairs of state, his frequent absences, his extravagance and his reputed immorality. As a sign of discontent, Lord Lansdowne has decided not to visit Kapurthala this year.” Further on, the report concluded, making some excuse for him, “He is a prince who can improve considerably, he has a good character but he lets himself be influenced by those people whom he considers his friends. The education he is giving his children indicates a certain level of refinement, and his main ambition is, apparently, to be treated like an English gentleman and to be allowed to mix freely with the cream of society.”
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So Westernized did Jagatjit want to be that in 1901 he committed a sacrilege that caused a great scandal, this time in his own community, among the Sikhs: he shaved off his beard. It was much more practical, and that way he looked less like a “barbarian” in Europe. He would no longer have to roll it up in a hairnet like the rest of his fellow believers, or spend hours combing and tidying it. He would do the same as any European man: he would shave every morning. The Sikhs interpreted this as rejecting his religion and identity. The raja was becoming “white.” One of the five obligations of a believer in the Sikh religion was never to cut one's hair, since this was considered as a sign of respect of the original form God had given man. The other four obligations were to always carry a comb, a symbol of cleanliness; to wear short underpants to remind oneself of the need for moral continence; to wear a metal bracelet, which symbolizes the wheel of life; and to carry a small dagger to remind one of the requirement for every Sikh to defend himself against any aggression. Jagatjit kept the essential part of the religion because the outward signs seemed like pure formality to him: he limited himself to praying every morning by reading some pages from the
Granth Sahib
, the sacred book. Much later, he would state that if he foreseen that the fact of shaving would offend the more ardent traditionalists so much, he would certainly not have allowed anyone to bring their scissors anywhere near his beard. In fact, he was ahead of his time. Years later, many Sikhs would shave their beards and not lose their identity because of it.

Of his extravagance there was not the slightest doubt, and in that too he felt he was a descendant of the great princes and emperors of the past. For all of them, being eccentric had always been a form of refinement. At a solemn ceremony in Kapurthala, just before leaving for Europe for the second time in May 1900, he laid the first stone of his new palace. Since then the inhabitants could see, year by year, how a building of a completely unknown style was emerging, whose façade was finally painted pink with white relief, with large French windows, gray slate roofs, and gardens inspired by Le Nôtre in which nannies and concubines strolled, pushing prams among allegorical figures and fountains just the same as in Versailles.

Extravagant, too, was his style of traveling. On one trip to Bombay on the
Punjab Mail
, the raja, who was in his private carriages attached to the end of the train that was carrying a thousand or so passengers, ordered his private secretary to have the train stopped for ten minutes at Nasik station. He wanted to shave. The stationmaster informed him that he had no authority to do that and immediately telephoned his superiors, who ordered him to get the train moving again. The secretary insisted they would pay for any expenses involved in stopping the train, while the bodyguards persuaded the engine driver to wait for a few minutes. And so the stationmaster had to put up with it, and the thousand passengers too. Then he sent a report making an official protest to the highest levels in the railway administration, who sent it on to the Political Department of the Punjab. The raja had got up to another of his tricks. “If the train had not waited for a few minutes,” replied the raja, “I might have injured myself, which would have cost the railway company a lot more, owing to the insurance I have, than the expenses incurred by a small delay.” That was his argument.

But the English, who knew the Indian princes and their indulgent lifestyle well, were able to put the raja of Kapurthala's extravagances into perspective. They were nothing in comparison to those of his fellow rajas. One prince of a state in the south, a great tiger hunter, accused of using babies as bait, defended himself saying that he had not missed a single tiger in his whole life, which was true. The maharaja of Gwalior ordered a special crane to be brought to hoist the heaviest of his elephants on to the palace roof, and the result was that the roof collapsed and the animal was injured. He alleged that he had decided to check the solidity of the palace roof because he had bought a gigantic chandelier in Venice to rival those on the ceilings at Buckingham Palace. The same maharaja was so fond of trains that he had ordered a miniature one made, whose engines and carriages ran on a network of solid silver rails between the kitchens and the immense dining table in his palace. The control panel was installed where he sat. Manipulating levers, knobs, buttons, and whistles, the maharaja regulated the traffic of trains carrying drinks, food, cigars, or sweets. The tank wagons, full of whiskey or wine, stopped in front of the guest who had ordered a drink. The fame of this train reached England owing to the fact that, one night, during an official banquet in honor of Queen Mary, because of a short circuit in the control panel, the engines hurtled out of control across the dining hall, splashing wine and sherry everywhere, and launching pieces of cheese with spinach and curried chicken all over the dresses of the ladies and the uniforms of the gentlemen. It was the most absurd railway accident in history.

If the raja of Kapurthala had refused to allow the train—the real one—that linked Delhi and the states in the north, to pass through his state so that he would not have to bother to go and welcome all the high officials that traveled on the line, the Hindu raja of one of the states of Kathiawar also refused, but for another reason: because it was an insult to his religion to think that the passengers who were crossing his lands might be eating beef in the restaurant car.

These extravagances were limitless. One maharaja of Rajputana (Rajasthan) dealt with all his affairs, including cabinet meetings and trials, from the bathroom, because it was the coolest place in the palace. Another became sexually excited at the sound of women giving birth. Another, in order to reduce costs, gave a single civil servant the positions of state judge and inspector general of dancing girls, for which the man was paid one hundred rupees a month. Another bought two hundred and seventy cars, and Maharaja Jay Singh of Alwar, who bought Hispano-Suizas three at a time, had them ceremonially buried in the hills around his palace as he tired of them.

The last nawab of Bhopal received a reprimand from the British authorities for having spent a colossal sum on building a portable bathroom, with a hot water heater, bathtub, toilet, and sinks, and so on, so he could go hunting! His brother, General Obaidullah Khan, irritated at the impatience of a shop assistant selling watches in Bombay, decided to buy the entire stock of the shop on the spot.

The maharaja of Bharatpur never traveled without his statue of the god Krishna. There was always a seat reserved for the deity. The public address system of airports all over the world often repeated the same announcement: “This is the final call for Mr. Krishna to go to departure gate …”

During the banquets he gave, the nawab of Rampur, known for his high level of culture, organized competitions of swearwords in Punjabi, Urdu, and Persian. The nawab almost always won. His record was when he spent two and a half hours nonstop uttering different swearwords and insults, while his closest rival ran out of steam after only ninety minutes.

The maharajas played tricks on each other to match their eccentricities. They were always exchanging virgins, pearls, and elephants. One young prince who was half ruined managed to strike a good deal by selling a dozen “dancing girls” to a Parsi millionaire. At the last moment he swapped them round and put three old women in the lot, keeping the three youngest and most nubile dancers for himself.

In the Olympics of extravagance, those of the nawab of Junagadh, a small state north of Bombay, stood out well above the others. This prince had a passion for dogs, of which he came to own five hundred. He had his favorites installed in apartments with electricity, where they were looked after by paid servants. An English vet who specialized in dogs ran a hospital only for dogs. Those that did not have the good fortune to come out alive from the clinic were honored with funerals to the sound of Chopin's
Funeral March
. The nawab sprang to fame nationally when he had the idea of celebrating the marriage of his bitch Roshanara to his favorite Labrador, called Bobby, in a grandiose ceremony to which he invited princes and dignitaries, including the viceroy, who declined the invitation “with great regret.” Fifty thousand people crowded the length of the wedding procession. The dog was dressed in silk and wore gold bracelets, while the bride, perfumed like a woman, wore jewels with precious stones. During the banquet, they sat the happy couple on the nawab's right, and then they were escorted to one of the apartments to consummate their marriage.

Generally speaking, the richer and more powerful they were, the more eccentric they became. The undisputed authority on the subject of the pleasures of the flesh and extravagances was a good friend of the raja's, and, in addition, a neighbor of his. Maharaja Rajendar Singh, born the same year as Jagatjit, reigned over the six thousand square kilometers of Patiala, a state bordering on Kapurthala. It had a higher population and was therefore richer. He had the right to a seventeen-gun salute. His tutors had taught him Urdu and English, and from a young age he had become a promising cricketer and polo player, until his addiction to alcohol and women, to which he gave himself with excessive regularity, would change the course of his life. He lived in a palace that was half a kilometer in length and whose rear façade gave on to an enormous artificial lake. Afghan hounds, peacocks, and tigers chained up by the pools covered in lotus flowers filled the gardens.