I recall that during our younger days, during the colourful festival of Holi, which marks the beginning of spring in the Indian calendar, the soldiers of the Ganga Risala used to come in a large group to wish the family and my grand- mother, who resided in Laxmi Niwas up until the time of her demise, used to give them bottles of rum which they would then drink and proceed to dance the traditional Rajasthani dance with the ‘chang,’ a large hollow drum made of goat or camel skin stretched over a wooden hoop. These immaculately dressed soldiers, dressed all in white with saffron- coloured turbans, were truly an amazing sight to behold. As the tempo of the music accelerated, their dance would become more frantic. Added to that, the effect of the rum resulted in many of them losing their turbans which tumbled off and scattered at their feet in long orange ribbons on the pure white marble floor.
As children, we played Holi with great enthusiasm: it is a festival where inhibitions are discarded to some extent and everyone, young or old, has a good time. It was the custom that the staff members at Lallgarh Palace would also assemble a Gher or group of people, who would perform the traditional songs and dances of Bikaner, before the Shiv Villas Palace where we lived with our parents. They would be covered from head to toe in various hues of gulal (the powdered paint with which Holi is played). Some of my father’s valets would dress up in skirts and drape themselves with a long piece of cloth and having tied musical anklets on their feet, and quite surprisingly gave amazing dance performances—I suspected that they might have had a lot of rum in advance to help loosen them up slightly for their hedonistic dance. We would come out with our father and watch for a while: he was very sporting and gave them all a bottle of rum to enjoy later in the day, whereas my mother was not very keen on any form of drinking on the premises, regardless of the festive spirit that prevailed during Holi.
Holi in the city of Bikaner is altogether different—simply applying gulal on each other is not sufficient. It continues in quite a violent form, with staves being produced with which their opponents are quite happily beaten physically and all the while, the ladies of the family from the safety of their balcony keep large buckets full of permanent colour with which they douse the unfortunate individuals below. This then culminates in the singing of extremely vulgar and bawdy songs and the eating of bhang samosas and pakoras (savouries laced with opium): needless to say by the evening everyone is very merry and as high as kites.
The other more traditional aspect of Holi in Bikaner as elsewhere is the lighting of the bonfire in the evening (called Holika dahan). Once lit, and depending on which direction the flames blew, those who can read the signs then forecast what the season will be like for farmers: will the rains be good, producing an abundant harvest or a bad one with drought and misery for both humans and their cattle. This is followed by traditional singing and dancing and the custom is for papadum (thin savoury pancakes) to be roasted on the bonfire and then offered to all present. It is a festival of joy and good spirits with which spring is welcomed with every fervent wish for a good harvest for the farmers in the season ahead. In cities, the usual practise is to play cards and huge sums of money are bet, won and lost, culminating in eating bhang samosas. It takes several days to recover from the effects of Holi, everyone enjoys it but most of all it is an occasion for children to have fun with their friends and siblings.
Both my great grandfather Maharaja Ganga Singh and my grandfather (when he became Maharaja) lived in a modest suite of rooms at Laxmi Niwas. The reception rooms of Laxmi Niwas open onto a marble courtyard. There was a fully furnished billiards room which was very popular with visiting guests: its walls were lined with the skins of tigers shot by Maharaj Ganga Singh, and each was of record length. It also housed a very interesting collection of freak animal heads, mainly deer with their horns askew in all manner of very odd shapes – there were almost matching pairs to be found there, flanking a mirror or painting. How much trouble must have been taken to identify such animals in large herds and then procure them for the billiard room, I cannot imagine. The billiard room also boasted of a very rare ‘hogeetal’ which my father explained to me was a cross between a cheetal or spotted deer and a hog deer.
The Laxmi Niwas card room had several tables always ready for guests to sit down and play games of bridge or gin rummy with beautiful cards printed with the Bikaner crest. The walls were lined with beautiful old black and white and sepia photographs of foreign dignitaries and Indian princes all duly autographed, as was the custom at the time. The smoking room was a veritable little jewel: normally as per the practise of those times the gentlemen retired to the smoking room after dinner and had their cigars and brandy there. The room has been painted in the style of the old Junagarh Fort and its walls are a sage green colour and richly embellished with gold paint. In my father’s time, the corridors of Laxmi Niwas were lined with beautiful marble tables each with a bronze of either animals or various equestrian ones. Maharaja Ganga Singh was a man of great taste and sourced only the very best for his palace from all his travels both within India and abroad.
The first floor was the Zenana area where my grandmother and her female staff lived. They had their own kitchen where only vegetarian meals were prepared. At mealtimes, a large thaali or silver salver lined with many dishes prepared in his own kitchen would be set before Maharaja Ganga Singh and then there would be another thaali sent from the Zenana for him as well. Fortunately, he never ate alone and was usually joined at the table by some of his staff and ministers who I am sure did justice to the food, and more often than not, he was hosting guests at his table.
Shortly thereafter, the third wing of the palace was completed in 1916. My father, Maharaja Ganga Singh’s first grandson, was born in 1924, and up until that time, the three wings were all known by different names that changed continuously, but in due course Maharaja Ganga Singhji instituted a committee to formally name the various wings appropriately. The committee in honour of the Maharaja’s first grandson named the third wing Karni Niwas after my father. This was a grand wing that housed the indoor swimming pool as well as the large durbar hall for formal entertainment and functions. To compete the three wings much later in 1926, a fourth wing named Shiv Villas was added: it provided additional accommodation for my father and his siblings who lived there as children. Shiv Villas was also our home and is the parallel wing to Sadul Niwas and this is where my family has always lived—we were brought up here, and as such I have always regarded this wing of the palace with great fondness.
I remember as a child, the ‘ghari saaj’ or watch keeper visited the palace on a weekly basis; he was an elderly and slightly- stooped man wearing his black Nehru style cap and prim granny glasses. His sole task was to go from room to room, winding the many dozens of clocks around the palace. He was a figure of great fascination to us and we followed him about as he proceeded to oil something here or adjust a pendulum there. Then one day he stopped coming altogether. I am not sure why – once the Privy Purses were abolished the staff was downsized dramatically and this resulted in a lot of thefts, especially in the unoccupied wings of Lallgarh—many of these beautiful clocks unfortunately had their parts and mechanisms stolen.
Lallgarh had a thriving little workshop—nothing as grand as in the previous generations of course, but nonetheless there was a carpenter, electrician, plumber and a very interesting man named Jagmal Singh, who had been with the family for four generations. He, like the others, had never been to school but he could copy what was written down in the most perfect hand on any signage and on various boards and notices. Every trunk and suitcase in Lallgarh bore his signage. He could also paint some very fine landscapes, many of which are at the Bikaner House Palace Hotel at Mount Abu. He was also responsible for painting two beautiful cupboards that my father commissioned for my nursery, one depicting Bambi from the Disney cartoon in a snow scene and the other was Mary from the nursery rhyme, ‘Mary Mary quite contrary… She grew silver bells and cockle shells in her garden. ‘These delightful and beautiful
ly painted cupboards remained with me till such time that I had children of my own.
Almost every princely family had their own private doctor who lived in the palace and ran a small dispensary. There was not just the immediate family to minister to, but a large retinue of staff and their dependents, as somebody or the other was almost sure to be ailing. Births and even minor operations were carried out at home in those days as local hospitals in small towns were neither well- equipped nor too hygienic, even though Bikaner had an excellent hospital. My great grandfather had seen to that, but having babies at home was the done thing and my brother Narendra Singh, was born in the Shiv Villas wing of the palace.
Dr. Kailash Narayan was our family doctor and had been so for many years; in fact, we were the fourth generation that he had attended to. He was a dear, sweet old man and kept an eagle eye on the staff to ensure that they were genuinely ill and not just trying to escape their duties with a bunch of flimsy excuses. He used to travel with us to Bombay and Delhi. He was always attentive and showed the necessary sympathy whenever we would go to him with some imaginary illness and I would even pretend to be hurt and he would wrap a bandage around my arm to help me escape my lessons. I did not succeed in these endeavours, but he certainly tied a neat little bandage and made me feel a bit better. He also doled out tiny soda mint pills when we complained of imaginary stomach aches. He finally retired when he was quite old and by then it was also impractical to have a doctor on the staff and this practise was dispensed with.
My mother though not in purdah had maintained the concept of the zenana, a wing totally separate from the men, the dividing point was the ‘dodhi’ where the ‘durbari’ or the protector of the door sat and monitored all activities. I remember one particular durbari called Chogji—he was always dressed immaculately in white clothes with a bright red turban and had a flowing white beard and an extremely kind face—he could have played Santa Claus effortlessly. He sat all day on a mattress at the door of the dodhi and messages from the maid servants were conveyed by the durbari to the kitchen or other departments, as the case maybe. In case a message needed to be conveyed to my mother or others inside, a bell would be rung and the message was conveyed to the maid who answered. It was all extremely archaic and my mother still insists on maintaining a form of zenana even today for some inexplicable reason.
The striking feature of Shiv Villas is the ground floor dining room and the huge kitchens. The dining room was treated by us as our rumpus room: after dinner we used to go down and play relay races and other fairly rough games, the violence of some resulting in one of my companions breaking her arm and another getting a bloody nose. The beautiful ceiling of this hall is composed of three intricately worked panels made in wood. The four walls are lined with hunting trophies, an interesting collection from my grandfathers’ hunting days. There is just about every animal that you can think of: most of them are from Africa from the giraffe to the little Dik Dik, the only animal missing from this collection is the elephant as in Hindu culture the elephant is associated with the God Ganesha and it is considered extremely unlucky to shoot one.
The Shiv Villas kitchens are huge and cavernous; they were still in use until fairly recently. Earlier on, the kitchens would be buzzing with activity with the many cooks who used to cook for up to a hundred people for big parties and then their juniors and the pot washers. I doubt my parents ever entered the kitchens and even we were discouraged from doing so, our male retainers were charged with keeping us away from kitchens and other out of the way places but undeterred we would send them off on some errand and sneak in and explore the several floors and all the old fashioned equipment that littered the place. All our wedding banquets were catered to from these very kitchens, as indeed were my brother’s birthday parties in January and all manner of receptions and gatherings during the course of the year.
Surrounded by well designed gardens, Lallgarh was a paradise for children. We spent every minute of our holiday outdoors, cycling, swimming and shooting. In the winter the gardens were awash with English country garden flowers, hollyhocks, lupines and even poppies, dozens of beautiful butterflies used to hover around them and not knowing better at that time, we used to catch them and put these unfortunate insects into shoe boxes with strategic holes, where sadly they did not survive very long. We did the same thing with lady bugs, gathering them up by the dozen and putting them on a small little hill surrounded by a little moat filled with water from the garden hose—of course, in our childish ignorance we did not realise that lady bugs could fly and a small moat was not going to deter them. Upon my request, my father had a lovely doll’s house made for me and it stood proudly in the garden – it was painted dark green and was large enough to accommodate several children and a vast contingent of dolls and stuffed animals, where we spent many happy hours playing.
Just outside Lallgarh was a large round motor garage with space for at least thirty if not more motor cars. I have been to the motor garage when it was in full swing, not as it used to be in former days with every garage full of vintage Rolls Royce’s of course, but there were more than enough cars to keep the staff very busy. Raiwant Singh was in charge of this garage and the various mechanics and drivers working therein. A tall, heavy set man; he had a resplendent black moustache and looked every inch the proud Rajput that he was. Every afternoon at the stroke of 4 PM, he would drive one of the cars to the porch at Shiv Villas, and await my father’s arrival. After tea, we would go down and more often than not, my father or Raiwant Singh would take us for a long drive.
In those days there was very little development around the palace where thriving colonies stand today; then there were farms and open land. The farmer’s children would recognise my father and he would stop and chat with them about the weather, growing watermelons and pumpkins and other agricultural trivia, which we found deadly dull and annoying. Sometimes, one of them would give us a watermelon to take back with us to the palace kitchen.
The motor garage was a hive of activity: they even had a small petrol pump, a grease pit and all the bits and pieces needed to keep the cars functional or to repair them if they were not. Up until almost the last election my father contested in 1971, it was in regular use, especially during the election campaigns when endless jeeps would flow in and out of it for petrol and repair. After the abolition of the Privy Purse, it was sadly not viable financially to keep it going and the few cars that remained were shifted to a makeshift garage in Lallgarh Palace.
A few yards away from the motor garage were the stables on one side of the road for horses and another for cows opposite it. The beautiful white horses named ‘Dalsinghar’ and ‘Sahela’, the horses that formed the list of heirlooms that were traditionally maintained by the Maharaja, were housed in these stables. There was also an elephant called ‘Bhanwar’, who lived in the big elephant stables at the rear of Junagarh Fort—but after the last elephant died, my grandfather decided to discontinue the practise of maintaining an elephant and after ‘Dalsinghar’ and ‘Sahela’ too died in due course, my father did not replace them. The star attraction of the stable was a brown and white mare called ‘Shooting Star. ‘We were taught to ride on her from a very young age. She was incredibly patient and had a benign temperament, and the most soulful, liquid eyes. Every evening she would arrive at the Shiv Villas porch, wearing a special saddle meant for children, accompanied by the Saees or stable boy who took care of her and Shanaji who was in charge of the stables. Occasionally, we would visit her in the stable and take her some sugar cubes which she would eat out of the palms of our hands. I cannot claim to have learned to ride, but it was good fun going for a nice ramble around the gardens of the palace, accompanied by three important looking people.
Bikaner is perhaps not strictly speaking a desert in like the one sees in the Middle East. It is flat, and from any given point, one can see the horizon on every side. The ground is hard and only robust plants and trees grow here, the ‘meeker’ being one exception, which thrives in arid
environment and grows and multiplies profusely. It is commonly known as the ‘Israeli baboon’, I presume the original trees may have been brought from Israel where the landscape in most parts is not very different from that of Rajasthan. We have no cactus, though there is a form of aloe, which grows quite vigorously and is used extensively in cooking; the scenery is like Arizona or the route between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Before the Government of Rajasthan stepped up its drive to retard the march of the desert, there were a great number of virgin sand dunes flowing like scoops of coffee ice cream. Now, most of them have vanished under intensive farming and habitation and those that remain have been heavily planted to prevent the sand from encroaching on the highway and surrounding areas during the scorching summer months when the region is plagued with horrendous sand storms. When we were children, we spent many happy hours playing on the sand dunes and collecting tiny white fungi that used to grow instantly the minute there was some rain.
Pat in the middle of the desert stands a glorious family property called Gajner Palace. Situated some twenty miles outside the city of Bikaner, one comes upon it suddenly like a mirage in an oasis in the middle of this vast and barren desert area. The personal property of the Maharajas of Bikaner, it has served as their country estate for centuries. The building and the stout boundary walls have been standing since the time of Maharaja Gaj Singh, the fourteenth Maharaja of Bikaner. The two palaces, Dungar Niwas situated on the lake and Sardar Niwas at the rear, were both extensively modernised by my great grandfather. The lake has always existed in some form but that too was expanded quite considerably by him. The palace complex is surrounded by an estate almost nine square miles in size, most of it arid but with a number of sizable thickets. It was once densely populated with wildlife like the dusky blue bull or Nilgai, Sambar stags, Cheetal or spotted deer, the indigenous Black bucks, the lively Chinkara and hundreds of wild boars. The blue bull or Nilgai and the wild boar are considered pests by the local farmers as they can decimate their crops in a matter of a few hours.
Palace of Clouds Page 15