|
|
Anyhow, if one
simply wants to know how affluent princesses lived in the early
1920s then this book is highly recommended. If, however, one is
looking for depth or even a level of emotional or intellectual
interest in the subject then this book is bound to disappoint.
Elaine Williams’ claim that the book is an "elderly monarch’s
poignant story of a princess manipulated and betrayed"’ and
"hers was a fascinating tale of contrasts and conflicts set
against the colorful background of India at the height of royal
excess as it emerged from the 19th century", doesn’t hold
water.
True, the princess
was a ravishing beauty who, "with her princely husband destined
to be Maharaja, was the toast of Paris, the ‘jewels in the crown’
of the French society, mingling with deposed European crowned heads,
including King Alphonso of Spain and Queen Marie of Rumania".
True also that she mingled with the "artists and writers of
jazz-age Paris. Cole Porter wrote Let’s Misbehave for
Princess Brinda`85on her visit to New York she dazzled Vanity
Fair magazine and the New York society." But for all her
travels and friends, Princess Brinda does not come across as the
sparkling, beautiful creature that she perhaps was. One cannot feel
the excitement of the times she must have lived through, nor is
there any poignancy in the account of betrayal she must have felt
when her husband took on a second wife as she was unable to give him
a son.
But whatever the
flaws in the book, Brinda seems to be totally honest about her life
and feelings vis-`E0-vis her relationship with her parents,
husband, sisters, father-in-law and daughters. Although not dealt
with with depth of feeling, the descriptions are there for all to
read and judge. So is it with accounts of the balls and voyages that
she took and the friends that she made in Europe. It is, in fact,
little more than an account of her life. Brinda neither endears
herself to the reader nor is the reader able to empathise with her
for she hardly reveals any foibles. Her willfulness or flashes of
temper that she likes to grandiloquently term as ‘rebelliousness’
are mere flashes in the pan and appear frivolous.
Brinda lived
through revolutions and world wars. She does mention friends that
she lost to these terrible times but they remain just names, perhaps
more alive in the princess’s memory than in the pages of the book.
For example, she dedicates a few lines to a gentleman called Count
Boni de Castellane, "Count Boni did nothing; by today’s
standards he was a disgrace and a wastrel. Yet in those times and in
that society, there was a place for a man with charm and elegance, a
gentleman of wit and manners. What did he do? He was an asset to any
dinner party, a gracious host, and a delightful guest." That is
all one hears of the Count. He doesn’t significantly figure
anywhere in the book. The whole narrative is full of such examples.
One cannot but rue the fact that
such rich experiences as the Maharani must have had in a changing
world were not better catalogued.
|
The
name of the book Maharani: Memoirs of a Rebellious Princess
certainly promises a good story. The princess’ rebelliousness,
unfortunately, does not quite impress since the rebellion is more in
her heart and mind than in anything she did. Born to a royal Rajput
family of Jubbal, she did pretty much what her parents decreed for
her. She was betrothed and subsequently married to the Maharaja of
Kapurthala’s eldest son and heir, Paramjit Singh Tika Raja after a
long engagement, during which her future father-in-law, the
Maharaja, decided what she would study. She conformed to tradition
when the occasion so demanded and repudiated the advances of the man
whom she met in France and whocame to love her. She went through
dangerous and painful fertility treatments to provide a male heir to
her husband and even suffered the ignominy of her husband’s second
marriage. So how does she qualify for being called rebellious?
