A Princess Remembers
The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur
Gayatri Devi was born to the Maharaja of Cooch Behar a small kingdom of rural Bengal and princess Indira devi of Baroda.
She was raised in a sumptuous palace staffed with 500 servents.
The book offers a glimpse of other princely states as well and gave astonishing details of the surroundings.
It is written from a maharani's point of view which also shows how the elite class looked upon the society.
Writing was quite lucid and the chapters made it easy for the readers to walk from one phase of her life to another.
It covered major events that happened in the country and the world in the 1900s from British raj to the assassination of indira gandhi. But the events were recorded quite briefly.
Big events like the world war, indo-china war and the emergency too were concisely mentioned.
It also gave intricate details and close encounters with many renouned personalities like Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Prince Phillip, Queen Elizabeth, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and John f Kennedy to name a few, showing jaipur must have been an important royal state with connections all over the world.
Gayatri devi also won a seat in the Parliament of India with the majority of 1,75,000 votes making a world record.
John F. Kennedy, president of the united states introduced her as "the woman with the most staggering majority that anyone has ever earned in an election".
The maharaja jaipur man singh || addressed in the book simply as 'jai' is presented as a glamorous charming maharaja of an oppulent state who plays polo, travels extensively throughout the world and threw extravagant parties. He also got deep sense of connection with the people of his state Jaipur, who worshipped him religiously.
The book had many photographs which made it more entracing and helped to paint a clear picture of how it all must have been like.
Glimpses of opulence was ubiquitous from her mothers french furnishing and live turtle inlaid with precious gems,parties, to expensive wedding ceremonies breaking world records.
Hunting processions were hard for me to read and accept as a form of entertainment, my heart ached everytime i read about a tiger or panther being shot.
In the introduction it says ' A Princess Remembers' presents an intimate look at the extraordinary life of one of the worlds most fascinating women but the book felt emotionally diluted, like a swift glimpse.
Pain and appalling events were simply listed and labelled tragic.
It felt that the purdah system prevalent in Jaipur put a veil on the proses of the memoir as well.
In the end Maharani described her life in the 1990s how her life from colossal palaces of baroda, cooch behar and rambagh strinked merely to a small bunglow 'lillypool'.
But she loved lillypool due to its proximity to ranbagh and also how it encapsulated golden memories.
She lost her mother, her brother and her most beloved jai.
But in the end she mentioned her daughter in laws, her sons, her grandchildren which felt like a subdue end to her story like a fairytale, where in the end everything goes right.
One of her greatest achievements according to me was the Maharani Gayatri Devi school for girls. A prominent step towards ending the purdah system and uplifting the stature of women in the state.
