Maharajas live life kingsize
By Manohar Malgonkar

YEARS ago, I wrote a novel called The Princes, and ever since then I have been thought of as a spokesman for the princely order.

In that role, I am one of those who don't believe that there can be any real comparison between the maharajas of the British days and today's business tycoons — the Ambanis, Modis, Khaitans, Khataus and Mafatlals. The two belong to different species like, say tiger and lion. For one thing, no matter how many millions a businessman has collected, by instinct and training he is averse to wasting money; the maharajas, for their part, were spendthrifts. Stories of how fiercely they competed with one another in the number of Rolls Royces they owned, spent fortunes on buying jewels for their concubines, or on maintaining racing stables, polo teams or tiger preserves, were the staples of the gossip of the Raj's clubland. If a businessman exemplifies middle-class attitude towards money; the maharajas exemplified the other extreme, flamboyance — even extravagance.

To my mind, the class of people who can bear comparison with our maharajas of old, are the cine-Mughals of Hollywood. If there is a difference here, it is that the maharajas were born maharajas, the Hollywood's maharajas were entirely self-made. The money they spent — or threw away — was money they had themselves earned. And their attitude towards money was shaped by their early lives: Most, if not all of them, had risen from a background of poverty. Their disdainful attitude towards money was a sort of revenge against life itself.

It is in their spending habits that the two show amazing similarities.

In 1866, a Maharaja of Baroda, Khanderao, built an entire new palace, Makarpura, as an abode for his second wife, a girl still in her teens. Years later, a Maharaja of Jaipur became known for ordering Yakoob sahib to build parks, tramlines, water-works, and Yakoob, or Colonel Jacob, who was the state's Chief Engineer, carried out these behests with exemplary zest.

As did Mukhel sahib, for Maharaja Jayajirao of Gwalior. To Mukhel sahib, whose name was Michael Philose, the Maharaja said. "We're to have Britain's Prince of Wales, coming here to shoot tigers. I'm sure he'll bring at least a hundred Englishmen and women with him. So build me a palace to house the lot."

So Mukhel sahib went to take a look at some of the famed royal residences of Europe. He went to Paris, Rome, London, Vienna and Venice to study palace architecture and also to bring back whatever was necessary to build and furnish a palace that would rival the grandest in Europe. Chandeliers, mirrors, antique furniture, carpets, statuary, pictures, silk brocade and velvet by the mile for curtains and other Victorian drapery — were all organised.

All this took time. The new structure had to be ready for occupation within a matter of 10 months. Mukhel sahib flung himself into overdrive. He assembled a veritable army of workers and organised day and night shifts. He got the building ready in time. The clutter of construction work had vanished and the gleaming white building was surrounded by a formal garden. Its rose bushes were in bloom, its fountains playing merrily, its vivid green lawns were large enough to play cricket matches on.

There is no record of what the Prince of Wales thought of this house that had been prepared for his visit. But the Maharaja himself did not feel comfortable in it. Jaivilas, he felt, had been designed and furnished to suit the lifestyle of Europe's nobility; for people who sat on chairs to eat their meals at tables, and with rooms as large as tennis courts for holding darbars or ballroom dancing. Indians did not eat at tables, nor did they hold court sitting on chairs. They sat down on wooden boards to eat their meals and on mattresses to hold conferences or watch women dancing. He liked to see mural paintings on walls, not mirrors.

The answer was clear. To build another palace more suited to the Maharaja's own style of living. So within two years, another palace came up, Motimahal. It is even bigger than Jaivilas or at least it covers a larger area of ground and with more rooms. Somehow it seems more at home in its setting. Directly behind it is situated the ancient fortress for which Gwalior is famed, and it faces an artificial lake.

"The capacity to order the building of palaces without bothering too much about their cost, somehow defined the essence of being a maharaja," I wrote years ago. And whether that statement is right or wrong, it is difficult to imagine a hard-nosed businessman, no matter how rich, allowing himself to be swept by personal likes and dislikes or whims. It is only some of the legendary cine-Mughals of Hollywood who betray a tendency to indulge in such theatrically grand commitments.

Hollywood. From the end of the World War I, till well into the 70s, it was the planet's show-business capital. Here, to be counted among the colony's elite, you had to cultivate some of the attributes for which our maharajas were known" Drive fast cars, be seen with glamorous women but, above all own the grandest house in town or at least in the neighbourhood.

"There are no people like the show people", as the song said. To the show people, life itself was theatre, to be acted out while the cameras rolled ceaselessly. To their Mecca gravitated the world's most beautiful women, which is understandable. But even the world's most talented men seemed to flock to it, to wait at the doorstep of some studio boss whose nod of acceptance would give them an entree into its magic circle.

Was that how it came about that today California, the state in which Hollywood is situated, boasts of the highest concentration of Nobel laureates? There are at least 30 of them. I have, before me, a picture in which 22 of them — all men — have gathered together on a beach, beaming at the camera in true Hollywood fashion.

But even if these scholars, scientists, writers, were haunting the place, they never belonged to the aristocracy of Hollywood whose lords and ladies were film stars. The film stars in their turn, paid homage to the maharajas who were the studio bosses.

The story of a house built by one of these studio heads, Jack Warner, brings out the parallels between them and our maharajas: Jack Warner, who came from humble beginnings and became a legend.

After he had earned his first few millions, Jack Warner married his dream girl, and for her built a magnificent house on a 10-acre plot on Angelo Drive, a sprawling, red-roofed villa such as she had seen while holidaying in Spain.

But when Jack divorced his first wife and married again, the second Mrs Warner just hated living in a house which had been designed to please the first. So one day when her husband had gone away somewhere on business, she sent for the wreckers and had the whole front of the house bulldozed.

Oh well, there are no people like the show people. When Jack came home and saw what his wife had done, he just told her to go ahead and build the sort of house she had set her heart on.

Her ideas were grander. A Roman villa, with fountains, marble floors, crystal chandeliers, a great curved staircase, and a parquet floor of carrara marble which she had bought in France and had carted to Hollywood.

And in this dream house Jack Warner and his wife lived happily ever after, or until Jack Warner died in 1990.

There is a maharaja-style postscript to the story. In 1990, a newly-minted Hollywood Mughal, David Griffen, was driving past the house and was seized by an urge to take a look at it. He was stopped by the guard at the gate. Then, after Jack Warner had died and the house was put up for sale, Griffen thought he would pretend to be a buyer and thus be taken round the house. "It was so grand and so Hollywood," he comments. So even though he had gone in merely to take a look, he there and then made up his mind to buy it.