Thursday 12 April 2012

A Princess Remembers

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I am currently reading A Princess Remembers, the memoirs of the Maharini Jaipur (Gayatri Devi). That's her above, and wow! What an incredible and ispiriring woman she was! I literally can not put it down and now my India obsession has reached new heights.

I am now fascinated by both Gyatri Devi and her Mother, Indira Devi (The Maharini of Cooch Behar) as the book is full of such beautiful pictures and enchanting tales of the fairytale lives they led. I'm going to wait to finish the book, and then i will do a whole post dedicated to them in the not too distant future.

For now I wanted to share with you some amazing imagery from one of my favourite websites
Old Indian Photo's. I could spend hours and hours going though all the catagories and I have picked out some of my favourites for you.

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The picture on the right is The Maharini of Jaipur with her incredibly handsome Maharaja known as 'Jai'. The picture was taken on their wedding day. They married for love.

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This is a very young Maharini of Jaipur in the 1930's.

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The man on the right is the Maharaja of Jodphur and one of my ultimate crushes! He is just so handsome. Poor Craig, he is a long suffering boyfriend to my obsession with Indian princes!

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The lady on the right is Suniti Devi, Maharini of Cooch Behar. She was the Maharini before to Indira Devi took over. She was also one of the leading figures in a westernising and rationalising movement within Hinduism. The whole of the Cooch Behar family were known for their unorthodox, westernized and wild behaviour, mixing with Edwardian society and leading a purely 'social' life.

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The 'Old Indian Photo's' site update regularly so go and have a browse. Have any of you read A Princess Remembers? I have wanted to read it for ages and found it in a charity shop over Easter. Yay! It couldn't have come at a better time as I am attending Nicole's (of Fashion Forestry fame) 'Indian Princess' party next week.

I'm very excited to meet the lovely Harriett and Aimee of The Bright Young Twins, Kerry of Yours Truly and Dulcie of Human Sea. Better get my outfit sorted!

One last thing. I now have a Facebook page for my blog. You can find it here. Or you can press the 'Like' button on my side bar.

Hope you all have wonderful weekends ahead of you.

Much love
Kelly-Marie xx







12 comments:

  1. Very interesting, thank you for sharing!

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  2. Interesting. Such stunning photos.

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  3. Oh I remember reading a magazine article about them awhile back and meaning to research into them, so this post is wonderful. Would love to read the book, how beautiful was she. Cannot wait to see your Indian Princess ensemble, you Londoners are lucky to be close together for such frivolities! xxx

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    1. I think we should try and organise a non London blog meet up, maybe some where in the middle. Will have a think as I would love to meet you. xxx

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  4. Such wonderful images. I have some mixed heritage so these pictures are extremely interesting (no princesses, sadly! He he!).

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  5. So inspiring! These images are heavenly! I'm very excited to meet you too - though I'm a little nervous that I have an afternoon to pull a costume together when I'm back from Portugal! Oops! ;-D

    Can't wait! xx

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  6. Wow, I knew of the website but not of this couple and the story! I will have to keep my peepers wide open in charity shops for this book! Sounds like it's right up my street, it must be if it is right up yours! ;) Oh have fun at the party, it sounds wonderful! I can't wait to see pictures! :) Zoë xxx

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    1. Zoe I wish you didn't live so far away and could come. One day it will happen! :) xxx

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  7. I LOVE INDIAN WOMEN! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH The men arent so bad either, I want to wear all of the mens outfits right away when I saw them! ahhhhhhhhhhhh

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  8. Great post Kelly-Marie, Im sure to revisit it and I have to join you in the crush stakes. *Swoon*

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  9. I wrote an obit for the Maharani. I'm passionately in love with all the India-based Merchant-Ivory films. Their other films I find extremely bad and very boring except for a couple of them. I have Mughal blood on my paternal grandmother's side. I have loads of family photos from the Victorian period. Here is my paternal great-grandfather Hadhrat Chaudhrey Ata Muhammad, he was a disciple of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad the founder of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. We have a diary of his which he kept in Persian and Urdu which includes many incidents about his time with His Holiness that do not appear elsewhere in the literature of the Community.

    I've got dozens of books on the history of India. Off-hand I would recommend Dalrymple's iconic biography of Zafar the last emperor who was also a great poet, The Life & Times of the Nawab's of Lucknow, The Delhi Nobody Knows and there are numerous films as well that spring to mind, again just off the top of my head The Chess Players is my favourite and the list goes on from there ...

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  10. Rehan those pictures are incredible! Your family history sounds so fascinating, it's lovely that you still have lot's of the pictures and the diary. I bet it makes fascinating reading. I always look forward to your comments, I always learn something from you. Thank you for the book recommendations, I have nearly finished A Princess Remembers so i'm going to have a look for some and will definitely watch The Chess Players.
    Thank you once again and hope you have a wonerful weekend.

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