COMING SWOON

Raja RaviVarma 1848-1906 was a scion of the royal family ofTravancore in Kerala. But he discovered early in life that he had a felicity with the brush,andleftthe royallifetobecome a painter. He drew inspiration from the styles of the past, but was also in- fluenced by British portrait-painters of his time. In 1873, at age 25, he won the first prize at an exhibition in Madras, and honours at the Vienna Art Exposition.

Leaving his wife and children at home in Kerala, RaviVarma settled in Girgaum in Bombay, wherehesetupa printing press for the reproduction of his paintings. He was at that time paintingmythologicalfiguresfromthe two major Hindu epics, in a series which was to spread over about 700 pictures. Oleograph prints of these, made at his press, sold far and wide in India and abroad, making Raja Ravi Varma the first Indian painter who reachedthemasses.

According to Karun, in Bombay, Ravi Varma met Sugunabai, a beauti- ful woman of Goan-Maratha lineage. She became the model for all major mythological female figures that he subsequentlypainted8212;Sita,Lakshmi, Saraswati, and most famously, Damayanti expressing her love for King Nala to the royal swan. She also posedforsomeof hispieceswherethe female formwas undraped. Itissaidthat duringthisperiod,the painter and his model fell in love with each other. However, Ravi Varma fell foul of orthodox Hindu society who took him to court over his lifestyle and for some of his 8220;lewd8221; paintings. Varma fought the case himself as no lawyer was willing to stand up for him. He pleaded his cause forcefully and won the case. But it was at a great cost: he was to lose his muse.

8220;I8217;ve done intensive research for the last year-and-a-half, poring over written sources, talking to the scholars and art his-torians, so that I could do justice to this great artist,8217;8217; says Karun. 8220;Sadly, little is known of his personal life.8221;

Suryamukhi will be a new direction for Indian films. Unlike Western cinema, which has often filmed the lives of great painters8212;Van Gogh, Gauguin, Goya, Pi-casso, to name just a few8212;there have hardly been any attempts in India. That is despite the fact that many of our famous artists like Amrita Sher-Gil had led a many-hued life, which could make for very dramatic scripts.

Shaji Karun, 54, has the right creden-tials to tackle the subject. An FTII-trained cinematographer, he began by shooting most of the movies of the well-known Kerala director, G. Aravindan. Karun8217;s first direc-torial venture Piravi 1988 won him the Camera d8217;Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Swaham and Vanaprastham also made the official selections at Cannes. At home, he has got the Swarna Kamal, the National Film Award, six times.

For playing Sugunabai, Shaji met Mad-huri Dixit and her agent in Mumbai a few weeks ago. 8220;I instantly visualised her for the role because Suguna was a Maharash-trian, very pretty, and Madhuri also has a fleeting resemblance to the model as de-picted in some of the Raja8217;s paintings.

Moreover, Madhuri8217;s versatility will easily carry off the complications in the model8217;s life.8221; If things work out, this will be Mad-huri8217;s first movie since Devdas.

For playing Ravi Varma, Shaji is in talks with two Bollywood stars. 8220;I hope to take a fi-nal decision very soon,8221; he says. Bobby Bedi, who seems to have a fascination for biopics Bandit Queen, Mangal Pandey will produce the film, which will be shot mainly in Pune, Goa and Varanasi.

There8217;s a sting to this tale of the Painter and the Model. After Raja Ravi Varma lost his muse, he did continue to paint. But he was never to paint goddesses again.

MANRAJ GREWAL
IT8217;S A FAIRY-TALE TRUE STORY of a dashing Indian ma- haraja who threw all propriety to thewindsandchosetotakeashisthird queen a teenage flamenco dancer fromanimpoverishedfamilyofAndu- lasiainSpain. AndPenelopeCruznow wantstotelltheworldthatstory. Sir Jagatjit Singh Bahadur, the Ma- haraja of Kapurthala, was a rare blend of heart and intellect, a king who was as indulgent with his subjects as he was with himself. But in the summer of 1907, the 35-year-old let his heart take over one balmy evening at a the- atreinMadrid wherehewasattending the wedding of his close friend King Alfonso XIII. Doe-eyed Anita Delgado, 17, was a raving beauty, but nothing in her life had prepared her for the ad- vances of a maharaja. He wooed her with flowers, with gifts, with words, until a mischievous friend of hers replied with a letter laden with condi- tions.The smitten Maharaja accepted them all and married her at a spectac- ular function in Paris on January 28, 1908, that had Europe gaping.

Eventhough themarriageendedin separation in 1925, their romance continues to captivate. Last year, Spanish author Javier Moro8217;s book on the love story, Passion India, sold a record million copies Moro is no stranger to India8212;he was the co-au- thor, with his uncle Dominique Lapierre, of It Was Five Past Midnight, on the Bhopal gas tragedy.Tikka Sha- trujit Singh, maharaja8217;s great-grand- son, first alerted eye to the planned Hollywood film based on the book starring Cruz. On May 20, at a press conference at the Cannes film festival, Cruz announced that Passion India is going to be the first film her newly set- up production house, 88 Produc- ciones is going to make. No director or budget has been decided yet.

Back in Kapurthala, now reduced to a sleepy little district of Punjab with its old-world charmintact, the movie stirs a mere flicker of interest. But the maharaja and his buildings8212;the legacy of his 72-year-longreignbegin- ning1877whenhe wascrownedatthe age of five8212;continue to fascinate his subjects.

A stately peacock nods his wel- come as you step into the tall gates of the Jagatjit Palace. Modelled on the Versailles by French architect M. Mar- cel, it8217;s now a Sainik School which has produced a thousand army officers till date. The lawns may not be mani- cured, the marble fountains dry, but the vanilla pink palace is redolent of Jagatjit8217;s French period when he turned his state into his very own Fontainebleau. The tall pillars still have those peaches and cream drapes, the lapis lazuli columns imported from Italy continue to stand tall and the rococo gilding on the ceiling remains breathtaking.

But Inderjit Sharma, the library atten-dant whose father was the Maharaja8217;s re-tainer, points out the wear and tear. 8220;There was a blue carpet on the stairs and every step had the seal of the kingdom,8217;8217; says he, taking you on a nostalgic journey of the days when the Maharaja had dedicated a room each to curios from a country he had visited. Today these rooms are part of the administrative block, teeming with clerks.

The Maharaja8217;s grandson, Brigadier Sukhjit Singh, who lives in the Italian-style Villa Buena Vista, a hunting lodge away from the city, recalls how the widely-trav-elled Maharaja who boasted friends like Prince of Wales, King George of Greece, the Emperor of Japan and the Russian Czar, was equally warm with his subjects. 8220;I re-member him adressing representatives of various villages by their names.8221;

The Maharaja also had a taste for democracy; he set up a state assembly in 1917. A polyglot8212;he was fluent in French, Spanish, English, Persian and Urdu8212;Ja-gatjit was also a secular man, building a mosque at a cost of Rs 4 lakh in 1930. 8220;WhentheBritish cametoknowof thecost, theywrote a letter tohim.Hereplied saying how 60 per cent of his subjects were Mus-lims, 8217;8217; remembersBrigadierSukhjit.

The late Maharaja8217;s subjects are protec- tive of his reputation for extravagance. So S.L. Chopra, a founding member of the Kapurthala Heritage Society, says the king never took a penny from the kingdom for his personal spending: 8220;For that he used to dip into the coffers of his estate of Oudh.8221; They hope Hollywood, which Jagatjit visited in 1929 at the invitation of MGM8217;s Louis B. Meyer, will stick to the facts.