‘House of Jaipur’ India’s answer to ‘The Crown’? A book on forbidden love, affairs and alcoholism

Jai and Ayesha, as Sawai Man Singh and Gayatri Devi were known, were India’s most glamorous royal couple, comparable to Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip or John and Jaqueline Kennedy points out the author of ‘The House of Jaipur’. John Zubrzycki, who served in New Delhi and Jakarta as a diplomat, may not be as well known as William Dalrymple but has already written three books on India, including one on the Nizam. This is his fourth book and he is working on a fifth on magician Gogia Pasha.

Gayatri Devi, acknowledged by international fashion and gossip columnists as a great beauty, has written her own memoirs, A Princess Remembers, along with Shantha Rama Rau, which is picked up avidly by tourists to Jaipur. But, as Zubrzycki points out, most books on royalty are like fairy tales, hagiographic and are mostly coffee table books. He himself spent 18 months researching in the archives in India and England and then poured through court documents and spoke to people who knew the couple to piece together a tragic story, a dynastic drama of love, hope, affairs and alcoholism and of intrigues and betrayal in Jaipur, Baroda and Cooch Behar.

Jaipur has been a hot-house of gossip, acknowledges the author before claiming after due diligence that Gayatri Devi had a half-sister, fathered by Khusru Jung of Hyderabad, who was employed in the services of her mother, Indira Devi.

The story of the unacknowledged halfsister was widely whispered in Jaipur but never spoken publicly, which the author finds strange because apparently there was a lot of affection between the two sisters.

He is more sceptical of the gossip that the first child of the mother of Jaipur’s last Maharaja Brigadier Bhawani Singh, was fathered by an official (Kamdar) in Jodhpur.

“According to the British Resident at the time this was all a rumour without substance. As I write in my book: ‘ it emanated from relatives of Kishore (Sawai Man Singh’s second wife). The objective was to discredit the Maharani (Marudhar Kunwar) so that the second wife could claim, as and when she delivered a boy, that he would be the legitimate heir to the throne,” maintained John Zubrycki in a chat with this writer.

It was Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who made the Maharaja of Jaipur India’s ambassador to Spain. But the Maharaja spent more time in England playing Polo and socializing. Sawai Man Singh, says John, was a good ruler but spending five to six months every year in Europe was not conducive to good administration back home.

The book dwells on the visits of Queen Elizabeth and Jackqueline Kennedy to Jaipur and the royal family’s foray into politics, Gayatri Devi founding Swatantra Party, mentored by C Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India. Swatantra Party became a party of princes and feudal lords, who had lost their kingdoms and fiefdoms following the abolition of princely states.

There are chapters on family feuds following the death of Sawai Man Singh, legal battles and questions on adoption. The book also highlights why Gayatri Devi was against her stepson Bhawani Singh contesting the Lok Sabha election, which eventually led to his defeat that left him bitter.