The Dancer and the Raja (14 page)

If the English thought that Jagatjit was becoming a womanizer, what would they not say about Rajendar, who showed great aptitude for sex and fun from the age of eleven. Together with his cousin, the raja of Dholpur, they had a reputation for being “wildly extravagant” hooligans, as they were described by an English officer. But the fact they were criticized in secret reports did not mean that in British colonial society they were excluded. Quite the opposite: when all was said and done, they were blue-blooded. In the same way as the maharaja of Jaipur called the Queen of England Lizzy, during the summers at Simla the three friends—of Kapurthala, Patiala, and Dholpur—rubbed shoulders with the cream of society, becoming the favorite company of the new viceroy, Lord Curzon, and his wife, until an incident interrupted that idyll. The three of them became so close to Lady Curzon that one night they invited her to dinner at Oakover, Rajendar's sumptuous residence in Simla, from whose balcony you could see the Himalayas amid weeping willows and flowering rhododendrons. The lady had expressed a desire to see close up the famous jewels of Patiala, known all over India. Before dinner, she tried on a pearl necklace insured by Lloyd's for a million dollars, and a tiara made of a thousand and one blue and white diamonds; both pieces were considered as the treasures of Patiala. “These jewels look better on a sari,” Rajendar said to her then. “Why don't you try on this one, which belonged to my grandmother?”

Few women in high society could have resisted the temptation to dress in such a manner, whether out of flirtatiousness or simple curiosity to see themselves decked out like an Oriental queen. The fact is that Lady Curzon ended up wearing the jewels of Patiala, including the famous “Eugene” diamond, the tiara, and the pearl necklace, and she did so wrapped in a crimson sari embroidered with gold thread. She looked wonderful. So that she might have a souvenir and to commemorate the amusing evening, the young rajas suggested she have some photographs taken, since they had the famous pioneer of photography in India, a Sikh called Deen Dayal, staying as a guest.

Unfortunately for the three princes, the photo appeared in the British tabloids, causing a huge fuss: the wife of the viceroy of the British Empire dressed up as an Indian queen! What a scandal! Lord Curzon was very angry and gave the order to forbid the three princes to visit Simla ever again, and at the same time the other maharajas were not allowed to go there unless they first had permission from him. Offended by the viceroy's reaction, which he considered to be out of all proportion, Rajendar built his own summer capital near the village of Chail, sixty kilometers from Simla and at an altitude of three thousand meters. There he had the highest cricket pitch in the world built, where British, Australian, and Indian teams played great games, enjoying the spectacular views over the Kailash glaciers and the peaks of the Himalayas.

Jagatjit opted to build a mansion about a hundred kilometers from Simla, in Mussoorie, another hill station, as the English called this kind of summer resort towns, whose atmosphere was always frivolous and carefree. He built it inspired by the châteaux of the Loire that had so impressed him, with conical towers roofed in slate. He furnished the inside with pictures, French antiques, Sèvres vases, and Gobelin tapestries, and he baptized it with the name of Château Kapurthala. The mansion would become famous for its masked balls enlivened by great orchestras. The fancy dress provided the anonymity required for Indian aristocrats and European women to have relationships behind the backs of their husbands, who were absent since they could not afford to spend four months on a family holiday. At the end of the raja's parties, the couples left secretly in rickshaws that wound their way down the Camel's Back, the circular road behind the hill from where you could enjoy an idyllic view of snow-capped peaks, green terraces, and flowering meadows. The couples would spend many hours there and then the rickshaw would take the ladies back to their place of residence. Some of them, the most daring ones, took their lovers home with them.

But Jagatjit was not a hardened partygoer or an alcoholic. He was a gentleman who enjoyed contact with high society, unlike Rajendar and his cousin, the raja of Dholpur, who preferred to surround themselves with pimps, gamblers, alcoholics, or European riffraff and parasites. The English accused the raja of Dholpur of being a bad influence on his cousin, leading him down the path to perdition and a life of evil, and of receiving money in exchange for his company. In an official report, Rajendar was defined as “an alcoholic, an indifferent father, an unfaithful husband and a terrible administrator.” When the viceroy sent a top civil servant to talk seriously to the maharaja about his indifference regarding administrative matters and his financial disorder, Rajendar, feeling offended, shouted at him, “I spend an hour and a half a day on affairs of State!” Rajendar preferred the company of horses to that of men. In his stables he kept seven hundred thoroughbreds, among which there were thirty high-quality stallions, which had given Patiala and India many great winners at the races. He also liked cricket and polo. He was the patron of Ranji, his field assistant, who took the Patiala team to the highest levels of cricket. And he managed to make the Tigers—his polo team, with orange and black kit—the terror of India.

But Rajendar's notoriety would come from the fact that he had been a pioneer. He caused a real stir when he imported the first car into India, a De Dion Bouton—with the license plate of Patiala 0—which left his subjects amazed. They considered it a miracle that it could move at a speed of 15 or 20 kilometers an hour without the help of a camel, a horse, or an elephant. There was an even greater stir when he announced his marriage to an Englishwoman. It was the first time an Indian prince had married a European. The woman was called Florrie Bryan and she was the older sister of His Highness's stable masterr. When the viceroy heard of his intention to marry, he sent him a strong warning through his delegate in the Punjab: “An alliance of this kind, made with a European woman of a rank very inferior to your own, is condemned to the worst results. It will make your position very embarrassing, both among Europeans and Indians. In the Punjab, as you can imagine, the wedding will be very badly received.”

In spite of the strong warning, two days later, on its front page, the
Civil and Military Gazette
of April 13, 1893, announced the secret wedding in a Sikh ceremony of the maharaja of Patiala and Miss Florrie Bryan. The note added that the event could not wait because the bride was four months pregnant. The nobility of Patiala, the viceroy, and the governor ignored the event. The Punjabi princes did too. Jagatjit Singh was in Europe, but he would certainly have attended his friend's wedding. Deep down he admired him because he had dared to do what he really wanted to do too: marry a European woman. For those drinking partners, who had combed the mountains in search of concubines, experts in the art of love, a white woman was the most sought-after of trophies—perhaps because she was also the most difficult to obtain.

19

For the princes, European women were the embodiment of all the mystery, emotion, and pleasure that the West could offer, a new world that they wanted somehow to possess. Furthermore, the provocative deed of seducing a white woman was like a metaphor for the ambivalent relations—a mixture of admiration and rejection—that they had with British power. It also fitted in with the Indian tradition of romantic love, where the lovers were able to defy the barriers imposed by caste and religion in order to satisfy their passion. Great love stories, which the cinema later brought to the screen for the delight of the masses, have existed in Hindu mythology since the dawn of time. And if that was not enough, the white woman also had her place in the
Kamasutra
. According to that Bible of sex, the best lover has to have very light skin and must not be sought in one's own country, where the women live whom one could marry, and whose past is known and guaranteed by the members of their families. One's lover should come from far away, from another kingdom, or, at the very least, from another city. The peculiar Indian concept of love separated the woman-mother, whom one marries, from the woman-lover with whom one has fun and enjoys sex—a dichotomy whose roots are to be found in ancient times in a polygamous society, which is not alien to Europe either. But in Indian mythology providing sexual pleasure elevates, while giving birth to children, which in turn are pure and sacred, taints the woman, who has to submit to constant purification ceremonies. In order to create new lives, Indian women lose a part of their body and soul at each birth. So it is very difficult, not to say impossible, to offer a part of themselves with the pleasure, in order to become good lovers.

So it is not surprising that all well-born Indians, swayed by the teachings of the
Kamasutra
, have dreamed at some time or other of having relations with European women. Having a white woman was considered as an exterior symbol of great luxury and exotic splendor.

The first known marriage between an Indian prince and a European woman was a complete failure. Florrie Bryan, tall, blond, and blue-eyed and rather graceless—a “mare-woman” with “elephant-woman” ascendancy, according to the
Kamasutra
—was only happy for the time her honeymoon lasted. In her ingenuousness, she thought she could change her husband, but she gradually realized that it was impossible. Rajendar's life continued to revolve around alcohol, women, and sport. Florrie began to feel more and more isolated, and more and more alone. Her fellow English people gave her the cold shoulder because she was of humble origin and the wrong race, and the maharaja's wives declared war on her. To such an extent that when her newborn child died because of a fever, Florrie was convinced he had been poisoned. There was no proof, and the Englishwoman knew India well enough to know that none would ever be found.

Two years later, Florrie lay on her deathbed, the victim of a mysterious illness. “Her body suffered a genuine physical illness,” the report of an English officer, Lieutenant Colonel Irvine, concluded, “but it was the disease affecting her soul that ended up being the final agent of her death.”

The thousand white doves that Rajendar had sacrificed to honor Florrie's memory were a poor compensation for all the neglect and rejection the woman had had to bear. Her jewels went to the raja of Dholpur. Rajendar alleged to the British authorities that that was what Florrie had wanted, but investigations revealed that he owed a lot of money to that raja.

Five years after Florrie's death, the prime minister of Patiala announced that Maharaja Rajendar Singh had suffered a fall from his horse that had caused his death. A glorious end for one who loved those animals so much. But the official announcement was a lie. The viceroy, Lord Curzon, explained to King Edward VII in a letter that the maharaja had succumbed to an attack of delirium tremens caused by alcohol. He was twenty-seven.

The hunger for European women that the princes felt made some unscrupulous individuals devote themselves to the business of arranging marriages. The first “agents” were Lizzie and Park van Tassell, a couple made up of a housekeeper and a Dutchman who made a living by giving demonstrations of balloon flights. They managed to marry off their daughter Olivia to the raja of Jind for the sum of fifty thousand rupees and the promise of a life income of a thousand rupees a month. Given the success of the operation, the Dutch couple decided to find more European women for other princes.

The English were perplexed and furious. The sudden passion for white women upset the social order. Marriages between European women and Indian princes meant recognition of a physical and emotional equality that questioned the racial and class hierarchy of the empire. And that hierarchy was a reflection of the Indian system of castes in which everyone knew where his place was and did not question it.

The problem is that they were not very sure how to react when the princes fell in love. The viceroy, Lord Curzon, had also tried to prevent that wedding, but the raja of Jind had let him know that it was none of his business. Curzon, a man little given to being thwarted, reacted by prohibiting Olivia from using the title of maharani and the couple from visiting Simla. In addition, he changed the posting of Lieutenant Colonel Irvine because of his inability to prevent this wedding. But it was a little like trying to stem the tide. In fact, the colonial government did not know how to fight that army of manicurists, dancers, schoolgirls, and European and American women of dubious origin who seduced the princes of its empire.

20

If Rajendar Singh of Patiala had reached very high levels of extravagance, his son Bhupinder would greatly outdo him, becoming a legendary character. Weighing a hundred and thirty kilos, with a mustache that stuck out at the sides like horns, sensual lips, and an arrogant gaze, Bhupinder was known for his enormous appetite for food—he was capable of eating three chickens one after another—and love—his harem held three hundred and fifty wives and concubines. He was a man who burned with animal passion, an absolute monarch with an insatiable appetite for sex, greater than that of his father. A man who on one occasion did not hesitate to order an armed attack on the lands of his cousin the raja of Nabha in order to carry off a young blond woman with blue eyes that the raja had sighted while out hunting.

Bhupinder and Jagatjit Singh became very famous in Europe—because they were Sikhs, because they were the monarchs of two states in the Punjab, and because of their strong personalities. The press alluded to the supposed rivalry between them, but this rivalry never existed. In spite of the similarities, they were very different characters. The number of Jagatjit's concubines never came close to Bhupinder's. Bhupinder was much richer, more ostentatious, and more quarrelsome. Bhupinder was a polo fanatic; Jagatjit was mad about tennis. They both recognized the British as the only authority, although they were both very reluctant to do so; if they could have proclaimed themselves kings, they would have done it without hesitation. Bhupinder's style was that of an Oriental monarch; Jagatjit wanted to be more like the kings of France.

In their way they were both good fathers. The numerous children of Bhupinder Singh lived in a palace known as Lal Bagh. They were cared for by innumerable English and Scottish nannies, and they all had a right to the same education and went to the best schools. A visitor who spent some time in Patiala counted fifty-three prams parked outside Lal Bagh one day. The same thing happened in Kapurthala, but on a lesser scale.

Three thousand five hundred servants of all kinds thronged the enormous palace in Patiala. Bhupinder hired an English mechanic trained at Rolls-Royce to take care of his twenty-seven Silver Ghosts, as well as the ninety cars of other makes that he acquired. A polo lover like his father, he maintained and improved the stables he had inherited, and he continued to sponsor the Tigers team who were at the top in this national sport.

If his father had been a consummate womanizer, Bhupinder Singh's extraordinary aptitude for sex became clear when he was still a child and left the prudish English civil servants perplexed. He collected women like some people collect hunting trophies, unlike Jagatjit who, although he fell in love easily, was able to be faithful for a certain time. Furthermore, the raja of Kapurthala enjoyed the company of attractive and intelligent women and always tried to keep up the friendship even after the affair was over.

Bhupinder was only interested in sex. During the torrid summers, he invited his friends to bathe in his enormous pool and made their stay more pleasant with the presence in the water of beautiful young girls with bare breasts, dressed in a simple square of cotton. Blocks of ice cooled the water and the monarch swam around happily, coming to the edge of the pool from time to time for a sip of whiskey or to touch a breast at random. Once, just to be provocative, he invited an English officer, who, on seeing himself in such a setting, did not know how to react. On one hand, he wanted to dive into that pool that looked so “promising”; on the other he was afraid of what people would say. Finally he opted to take the plunge, and so the rest of the world found out what was “going on” in the pool at Patiala.

Such was Bhupinder's hunger for sex that, even when he was still very young, he invented a cult to disguise it. He did it with the complicity of a Hindu priest, Pandit Prakash Nand, a follower of a secretive Tantric cult known as Koul, from the name of a goddess who had to be placated by mastering certain sexual practices. Twice a week, Bhupinder organized “religious meetings” in an out-of-the-way hall in the palace, where the priest had set up a clay statue of the goddess Koul, which he had decorated with jewels loaned by the maharaja. Naturally the official maharanis were not invited to these celebrations, which were always surrounded by great secrecy. The priest led the ritual dressed in a leopard skin and with his face painted red and his head shaved, apart from a ponytail left in the middle. “He looked fierce but serene and full of dignity,” Jarmani Dass, the prime minister of Kapurthala would say. He began by asking the audience, among which there was a large number of young girls from the mountains, mostly virgins, to sing for the goddess. Then he served wine mixed with aphrodisiacs to all those present and the maharaja asked the virgins to come up to the altar and undress in order to pray to the goddess. Ignorant and intimidated by the religious pomp, they obeyed without question. As the night went on and as the alcohol and potions added to it took effect, the high priest asked some couples to copulate in front of the statue of the goddess, asking them to do it slowly because what was important was not so much the act of sex but the way of holding back and making the pleasure last. “One after another, the virgins of the harem, who were aged between twelve and sixteen, were brought to the altar, in a state of intoxication,” Jarmani Dass reported. “These virgins had been bought from the tribal families in the hills and they were kept in a wing of the palace specially reserved for children and adolescents. When it was considered they were mature enough, they were made to participate in the ceremonies for the goddess and had to obey the commands of their master. The wine that the high priest poured over the heads of the girls ran down between their breasts and reached their bellies and genitals, where the Maharajah and other guests placed their lips in order to suck up a few drops of the liquid which was considered very holy and would purify the soul.” Jarmani Dass never specified if his master, the raja of Kapurthala was present at these ceremonies. He would probably never have participated in a farce like that, which he would have considered of poor taste. He was too refined for that. A confidential letter from an English civil servant close to the raja, written to the governor of the Punjab, suggests he did not join in these orgies: “The ministers around him do their utmost to draw his attention to Rajput girls. They use everything they have at their disposal to pull him away from the strong attraction he feels for European women. But the Rajah does not like Rajput girls. His previous conduct has shown that his greatest desire is to satisfy his sexual appetite with women of European origin or family. The Rajah speaks and reads French. He has a subscription to
La Vie Parisienne
, a magazine whose illustrations are sometimes censurable. It would seem that on the wall in his bedroom he has a very indecent picture, although I have not been able to prove that with my own eyes.”

Both princes collaborated in obtaining all kinds of aphrodisiacs—because they needed them for their lifestyle. As they were both hypochondriacs to a certain extent, they were always surrounded by numerous traditional Indian doctors and also European ones. They sent them to each other to treat their own illnesses and those of their families. A blind medicine man called Nabina Sahib visited the palaces of the princes of the Punjab assiduously. He had the ability to diagnose illnesses by taking the pulse of the patients. As the palace women were not permitted to allow themselves to be seen, and much less to be touched, by a male doctor, to examine them this medicine man told them to tie a piece of string round their wrists and so, from a distance, putting the end of the string to his ear, he took their pulse. His successes left the European doctors puzzled.

Rounds in the palace began early in the morning. The doctors gathered in the hall and, after commenting on different aspects of the women's illnesses, went out into the rooms. Watched closely by the prince's trusted servants who in some cases, for greater security, were eunuchs, the doctor talked to the sick woman through the lattice or curtain. Face-to-face contact was not permitted, although on occasions of urgency the doctor was authorized to put his hand under the curtain to take the patient's pulse. “There are some women who pretend to be ill just to have the chance to talk to the doctor and to allow their wrist to be held,” had written Nicolao Manucci, an Italian doctor who had attended the women in the harem of the emperor Aurangzeb. “The doctor stretches out his arm under the lattice or curtain and then the woman strokes his hand, kisses it and gently bites it. Some of them even place it on their breasts …”

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Indian doctors were still subject to those stringent rules of the
zenana
. In some more progressive states, like in the Sikh states in the Punjab, only European and American doctors could treat the women directly, without a veil, but only when it was urgent. Their prestige was so great that the princes trusted them.

When the consultations were over, with their notes in their hands, the doctors usually reported to the raja, always in the presence of the Indian healers. In Patiala, as there were over three hundred women, it was impossible for the doctors to write reports according to the name of each of them. Therefore, to make the process easier, they were organized alphabetically. Maharanis were indicated by letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, and so on, and second wives or ranis by numerical order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 … Finally the other women around the raja were classified on the doctors' charts alpha-numerically: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, and so on. That was the order the raja used to go over the list, which informed him of the kind of illness they suffered, the prognosis, and the recommended treatment.

The rajas visited the sick women, both when they were “official” wives (the daughters of aristocratic families) and when they were concubines from one of the hill tribes. Once inside the
zenana
, they all deserved royal attention and all could be sure that, however sick they were, they would never be thrown out. In order to know which of his wives was having her period, Bhupinder had an idea that would soon be copied by other rajas: he had ordered those who were menstruating to leave their hair loose. In that way he knew which to avoid when at nighttime he had an irresistible desire for sex.

Impelled by his addiction to sex, Bhupinder also used his doctors for purposes other than curing or healing. Apart from knowing which were the concoctions and substances that would be most effective for prolonging his erection, he was also interested in discovering if there was any way of giving back her youth to a lover who was getting on in years so that she could continue to attract him as she had on the first day. Still according to Jarmani Dass, he got the doctors to make the women give off sensual and provocative body smells, based on vaginal injections. Thanks to the contacts given to him by his friend the raja of Kapurthala, he hired French doctors, among whom was Dr. Joseph Doré, of the Paris Faculty of Medicine. He took charge of the more serious operations, including gynecological ones, which Bhupinder, curiously, liked to attend. Likewise, the French doctors carried out plastic surgery, especially on the breasts. “The French doctors were experts in this art, and carried it out according to the exact wishes of the Rajah, who sometimes wanted them to be oval in shape, like mangoes, and other times like pears. When he encountered some difficulty in carrying out the act of sex with one of his women, the doctors were always ready to carry out a small operation in order to make penetration easier.” The maharaja turned one wing of his palace into a laboratory whose test tubes and filters produced an exotic collection of perfumes, lotions, and love potions. The Indian doctors competed in their attempts to produce aphrodisiacal concoctions based on gold and ground up pearls, as well as spices, silver, iron, and herbs. They achieved some success with a concoction of carrots mixed with sparrows' brains. But that was not enough to increase sexual vigor in the measure required by the maharaja. In the end, the French doctors brought a radiation machine to the palace. They gave the prince radium treatment, guaranteeing him that it would increase “sperm power, testicular capacity and stimulation of the centre of erection.” But it was not loss of sperm quality that afflicted Bhupinder Singh, but another ill that also affected many of his fellow rajas: boredom and monumental egoism. Years later, when a journalist asked him, “Highness, why don't you industrialize Patiala?” As though he had been asked a stupid question, Bhupinder replied, “Because then there would be no one wanting to join the armed forces of the state and it would be impossible to get cooks and servants. Everyone would move over to industry. It would be a disaster.”