The Dancer and the Raja

by Javier Moro

  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 sin
g 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.”

  PART THREE

  “I Am the Princess of Kapurthala”

  21

  “Ma’am, there’s a parcel here for you.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Anita stretches slowly. All her movements
are deliberate, in slow motion. She leaves the ostrich feather fan on the bed and looks through the large window of her room in Villa Buona Vista. The sky is almost white, and the line of the horizon can barely be made out. Down below, the flowers in the flower beds are wilting, the lawn is no longer as green as it was in January, the dogs are curled up in the shade of the veranda, and the fawn spends the whole day lying by the pool. The heat has suddenly arrived. And it is an intense, omnipresent heat, dry and burning. Heat like in Málaga in August. With the difference that now it is March, and they say that the temperature will keep rising until the rains in June. It is hard for Anita because she is in the eighth month of her pregnancy. Her beauty is that of an adult now. The curve of her belly under her silk dress has taken away all traces of childhood. She looks taller and has a peach-colored complexion that makes her face light up. She still has her gracefulness, accentuated if possible by her early maturity. She says she cannot live without the punkhas,9 her “human ventilators.” They are old servants who spend the day lying on the veranda, pulling a rope attached to their big toe. The rope goes through the window of the room and, by means of a pulley, turns a long piece of wood attached to a piece of cloth dampened with perfumed water, which moves the air. It gives some relief, but even so one has to fight the heat mentally. One has to limit one’s physical efforts, measure one’s steps, and prepare for the energy required for any activity. For that reason Anita moves slowly. She goes down the stairs resting her swollen hands on the banister. Could it be another gift from the raja? she wonders. She is surprised because there is nothing to celebrate. On February 5, her birthday, her husband surprised her with a wonderful pearl necklace. But the fact is that sometimes unexpected gifts arrived, like the one from a subject who sent two peacocks because he was grateful for a judicial decision, or the one from a monarch friend who announced his visit by sending a crate of whiskey.