My childhood summers were mostly spent listening to the tales of the darbaar of Jodhpur from my granduncle who served as a comptroller at the palace. I vividly remember him telling, with drama and vivacity, an incident when the Maharaja ordered him to throw out the goods of a British gentleman who refused to pay any rent of the city-shop on reason of being an aadmi of the Raj. He was further asked to leave the state of Marwar before two sunsets considering that he had a family of four. The Colonial-Crown was falling in the country and his ousting was very much a symbolic grudge against the Raj. Day next and the rents of all the city-shops was muafed by an order to add salts to the injury.
Some other narrations which I half-remember were the crowd estimates, which would be generously raised every time he’d tell the magnanimity of the event , when the now titular Maharaja Gaj Singh-II came back from England after finishing his education. Some other were encomia of the Maharaja when he ‘saved’ half of his praja from starvation by giving them work during what was the most severe kaal(drought) ever in the State. And it resulted in what we now call The Umaid Palace, worlds largest and probably the most regal private property. Years have passed, but the majesticness and the awe has stood the test of time. I believed not and found the Discovery documentary “The Maharaja of Jodhpur” to be a fake but the disturbing sobs of the inconsolable Jaipur masses at the cremation of Maharani Gayatri Devi made me feel so much out of time. The death of Bhawani Singh, Maharaja of Jaipur some days back aroused similar emotions and the entire city was on roads. The royal wedding of Shivraj, Rajkumar of Jodhpur (who is an international Polo player and almost lost his life some five years back falling off an uncontrollable horse) this year would’ve beat the so much over-rated British Royal Wedding by any account. There is something in the regality in the erstwhile provinces of Rajasthan which still make people so much attached to it. The record electoral victories of the Rajkumars in the early ‘60s and ‘70s so much unsettled the Central Government that all the shahi-pensions and allowances of all princely states were stopped with immediate effect to discourage the trend. Still, the royal families have given some of the most competent officers to the Indian Army right since the World-Wars.
The forts are crumbling, the shades of blue and pink are fading, walls are being defaced and encroached and cities are expanding beyond the regal-gates of the towns but still there is a world still trapped in the past fearing of losing their identities and heritage. A world of nostalgia unable and unwilling to accept the death of aristocracy.
In picture: HH Maharaja of Jodhpur Gaj Singh-II (1948-Present)
