The lovely Pataudi Palace is now a palace hotel, currently hosting Julia Roberts. One traveller was there to see the changeover as it happened.
Her familiar clearly has a long tail, curving its way far across continents to Pataudi in Haryana where the lovely Julia Roberts, she of the heart-stopping smile, has arrived to shoot for the movie, so the cover of the next reprint will read “NOW, A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE”. The movie, without doubt, will be as successful as the book, though less irrationally so, given that famous smile…
Pataudi Palace, run by Neemrana Hotels, was till recently the country home of the Nawab of Pataudi and his wife, Begum Ayesha Sultana — i.e., Sharmila Tagore, chairperson of the Film Censor Board (notable for her censoriousness). The nawabs of Pataudi trace themselves to a band of Pakhtoons of the Bareq tribe, mercenaries who sometime in the 15th century thundered across the Khyber on horseback and down towards the dusty plains of Delhi. And like many who came before, they stayed. By the 19th century, in deference to their British overlords, the Nawabs, like the rulers of many Rajput states, led the proto-British aristocratic life. In these 400 years the Bareq Pakhtoons would have become unrecognisable to their fellow tribespeople in the wild Frontier Provinces of north-west India. They built themselves English mansions set in rolling parks, studied at Eton and Harrow, kept a stable of elegant cars and, of course, went hunting. (That is, until both “Tiger” and “Chhote Nawab” Saif Ali were on separate occasions unceremoniously hauled off to jail for shooting blackbuck!)
When I first visited Pataudi, the Begum was moving from room to room with a little notebook, making an inventory of the personal bric-à-brac left in the rooms before it was handed over to Neemrana. She was clearly not in a good mood. In stony silence we shared an austere meal of lauki, unseasoned dal and dry chapattis. But we did dine under a rare antique, rose-coloured chandelier. And that night I brushed my hair seated at a huge panelled dresser carved out of real sandalwood! The enormous armoire was sandalwood, too, and when I took my nightdress out from a drawer, it was laden with the fragrance. It was luxury of an order you can’t put a price to.
Pataudi Palace is a beautiful, white mansion with high ceilings, enormous rooms, verandahs and colonnades, colonial in the style of the imperial mansions of New Delhi. But perhaps somewhere in their racial memory, the Pataudis stored a remembrance of the gardens of Pishin and Shorawak whence they came. The gardens here are a joy, filled with flowering and fruit trees, fragrant vines, lush frondage, leafy arbours and dancing peacocks, and alive with creatures that scuttle, sing, chatter, croak and drink at the fountain...
If Gilbert found transcendence in a slice of pizza, and divinity while scrubbing steps, I think it is entirely possible that Pataudi Palace may be a cosmic portal to the Seven Heavens.