Umaid Bhawan - Jodhpur

Umaid Bhawan is said to be the second largest private residence in the world, next only to Buckingham Palace. 

Constructed in 1929, by Maharaja Umaid Singh, the grandfather of the current Maharaja, Gaj Singh II, the palace has 347 rooms, and served as residence to the erstwhile royal family of Jodhpur. Actually still does, the current Maharaja still lives there. 

The palace was built right from 1929 to 1943, and was planned on lavish scale, essentially to provide employment to the people of Jodhpur during the time of famine.

In 1971 Maharaja Gaj Singh converted a part of the palace into a hotel, which is currently run by the Taj Group of Hotels.

The Palace thus has three parts: the residence of the royal family, a luxury Taj Palace Hotel, and a Museum focusing on the 20th century history of the Jodhpur Royal Family.

The palace also boasts an amazing private vintage car collection. Needless to say, the picture is courtesy Google, but then we did see the Maharaja at the Sufi festival. He is a little older and grayer now I guess.....but this picture could be fairly recent too...polo is still a much played sport in Jodhpur, and the cars, atleast most of them look like they are ready to be driven out. We could see the love and respect that the people of Jodhpur still feel for him.

He still runs the Umaid Bhawan and Mehrangarh Fort trusts, and it's his entrepreneurship ( like the hotel and the Sufi festival) that has enabled both these epic monuments be maintained as they are. It's said that Mehrangarh is one of the best maintained forts in the country.

A couple more pictures (also courtesy Google)

Now for the story;

Gaj Singhs's father Hanuwant Singh, was Maharaja during the period when India gained independence. He was a keen horseman, an ardent polo player, an expert pilot, and an amateur magician. Now, how impressive is that. He was married, and became Maharaja in his early twenties.

During one of his polo matches he meets the beautiful Zubeidaa, and gets completely besotted with her. 

There is then a passionate romance, which the royal family is in disapproval off. And the disapproval was grim and severe, not just because he is already married, but more because Zubeidaa was wrong in more ways than one. She had been already married, was divorced with a child, and the final blow...she was a muslim. Yet the headstrong Hanuwant Singh has his way, he marries her. 

And listen to this....the pressure from the family was so bad, that they had to leave Umaid Bhawan. And where do they go......they move into Mehrangarh Fort 

In 1952, Hanuwant Singh contested the Lok Sabha elections, and won with a landslide victory (loyalties to royalty runs deep) And he is said to have flown Zubeidaa, in his plane, over the Marwar desert to celebrate the victory. (He had inherited the Jodhpur Royal family's passion for flying, and was also known to be a reckless flyer ) While no one knows exact details of how, there was a crash, and both he and Zubeidaa were killed in the plane crash. 

The story was in fact made into a movie by Shyam Benegal, a movie by the same name, Zubeidaa. A beautiful movie with lovely music too.

And while the movie ends with the crash, in reality, Zubeidaa had a second son by the Maharaja, under an year old when she died.

And on this trip, I even heard how the moment the news of the plane crash reached the palace, the Rajmata (the first wife) had her aide rush to Mehrangarh to pick up the baby, as she knew the family would immediately have the child killed. The boy was then brought up by the first wife, the Rajmata of Jodhpur, along with her own son (the current maharaja)

And what's most fascinating is that the movie is written by scriptwriter Khalid Mohamed, who is Zubeidaa's son by her first marriage........who she left behind with her mother, when she goes off with the Maharaja.  The movie in fact starts with him making an effort to find out more about the mother he never knew.

I remember back then, watching the movie multiple times, not even knowing it was based off a true story. Who needs fiction, when we have true stories like this, huh?