Oh, come on Mother. It’s going to be a great adventure. A maharajah, we’re going to be the guests of a maharajah. Why, he’s so rich I guess he just has no idea how much money he’s got. And jewels. And elephants. Only think.”
-from The Murder of the Maharajah by H.R.F. Keating
New Years Eve 2006, we and the children were invited to celebrate at the Mehrangarh Palace with the Maharajah of Jodhpur, as were all guests at his Umaid Bahwan hotel. Seventeen foot long turban wraps were distributed to men and boys alike. I had previously shaken hands with the maharajah in London while visiting an art gallery which every Saturday at closing hosted bridge games- I was there to look at art, not to play.
A bus took us up the rocky crag to the steeply pitched and portcullised front gate. From there we walked, the children almost skipping. On the curving and corkscrewing approach to the palace proper we passed side niches staffed by singers, shenai players (Bismillah Khan had died that year), hijra dancers, and most important, attendants bearing ewers of opium water poured directly into the guests’ cupped hands. I slurped like a horse, not like a cat that was expected of me, and I recall little else of the evening. Ask the children for details. There were likely to have been jewels. Even I would have remembered the elephants, which I do not.