AS a genre, Erstwhile memoirs are expectedly bright, jewelled pieces of the Indian mosaic and the foremost of them is A Princess Remembers by Maharani Gayatri Devi and Shanta Rama Rau. We tend to like MGD rather, because, whatever the personal storms in the Kachwaha Belleek, she has done so much public good and helped asurya-sparsha (untouched by the sun) women in purdah get an education and out into the world. It didn’t hurt either, that she was exquisitely lovely and offset our predominant bhooka image.Reading Brinda of Kapurthala’s memoirs, however, is a different feeling. She was educated in France by Jagatjit Singh, her Francophile father-in-law to be, the same bon vivant who built a mini-Versailles in the Punjab and created a huge rumpus by espousing Spanish dancer Anita Delgado. Brinda was a Rajput princess of the tiny pahari state of Jubbal. The Sikh ruler of Kapurthala wanted some Rajput blood back in his dynasty and picked this poor but well-born princess. More, he arranged for her to be educated and Europeanised by a French Vicomtesse. After her education, she was brought home, Italian maid in tow, and married in a six-hour-long ceremony to Paramjit Singh, the Tika Raja of Kapurthala. A crude denouement followed. Three daughters and several operations later, when her childbearing days were clearly over, Brinda’s husband was ‘‘forced’’ by his father to marry again, for a son.There is deafening silence about the English dancer Stella Mudge whom Paramjit Singh married between his Rajput brides (she died in 1984), or Ajit Singh, the exceedingly handsome son of Anita Delgado who attended Brinda’s wedding and died a bachelor in New Delhi in 1982. The present ‘‘king’’ of Kapurthala, Sukhjit Singh, is the son of that third, nameless country bride of Brinda’s husband. (She died at 21.) Page Three habitue Tika Shatrujit Singh, who flogs Moet & Chandon in India, is the son of Sukhjit Singh. Brinda’s book, however, ends in 1954, written for her by an American writer, Elaine Williams. A new Rupa paperback edition has just come out. It’s a pity they didn’t add an update, especially on Princess Indira, Brinda’s spunky eldest daughter who ran away to be an actress in London and died unmarried in Chelsea in 1961. Principally, this book is a fascinating read because of its candour and its detail. In her time, Princess Brinda met everybody who mattered in India, Europe and America, from Gandhi and Nehru to fat, rich Elsa Maxwell to Nazi Prince Philip of Hess, exiled King Alfonso of Spain, the Prince of Wales and Umberto of Italy. Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Butcher of Jallianwala Bagh, inflicted middle-class English angst on her for imagined slights of protocol. But the well-born Viceroys and their wives, like Lord Hardinge and Lord Willingdon, stuck up for Brinda, especially after her in-laws dumped her. Medha Patkar she’s not, but it’s foolish to want a butterfly to carry bricks. You can’t help liking Brinda’s apparent honesty, for tears do burn human eyes even if shed on a down pillow.
