Live Like a Maharaja

Amrita Gandhi

Description

From the anchor of the incredibly popular NDTV Good Times show, Royal Reservation On her show, Amrita Gandhi has been a welcome guest to royal families all over India. Live like a Maharaja: How to Turn Your Home into a Palace is her treasure trove of royal lifestyle tips and secrets that will change the way you live. Discover the art of setting a dining table from the royal house of Rampur; learn how to accessorize your chiffon sari like Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur; uncover Saif Ali Khan s style commandments and master the secrets of an authentic Hyderabadi biryani from the chefs of the Falaknuma Palace. Full of great advice on how to create luxury out of the ordinary, this book is an exciting journey into the lives and homes of India s royal families, revealing the prized lifestyle secrets that will make kings and queens of all of us.

Sujets

• Interior design
• Humanities

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 15 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9789351186274
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

Amrita Gandhi

Live Like a Maharaja
How to Turn Your Home into a Palace
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Princely Prelude
The Royal Wardrobe
Personal Living Spaces
Your Home, Your Castle
A Movable Feast
Of Beauty And Brawn
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Copyright Acknowledgements
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Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
LIVE LIKE A MAHARAJA
Amrita Gandhi loves a good story and her encounters with princely India, the people inside and outside the palace gates, have given her more tales than she can possibly ever recount. She has written and presented Royal Reservation on NDTV Good Times since the channel was launched in 2007. Amrita has scripted other travel shows such as the award-winning Ten Things to Do and Warrior Tribes of Nagaland .
Amrita has worked in creative format development in the United States. She is a stage actor, having trained at the American Conservatory Theater and at Shakespeare & Company, with performances on stage and in theatre festivals in California. Amrita studied in Rishi Valley, and at the University of Durham, UK, and read anthropology for her master s degree at the London School of Economics.
To the artisans who worked with silk, crystal, wood and stone to fashion palaces and the fine things in them to give royalty a permanent place in our imaginations

Princely Prelude
Living like a king today would call for some rebellion from what royal lifestyles are supposed to encompass-for instance, say, a wedding party for a favourite dog or silk-lined travel trunks for bejewelled shoes. While opulence and excesses are half the fun in the retelling of royal ways, the lifestyle how-tos that have made their way into this book are presented with the idea that the keys to regal living can be turned even by those of us who live and entertain in a city flat and travel with carry-on luggage.
Here you will see how a bandgala waistcoat with a secret cut can do the talking for you at a dinner party. A hostess with the mostest shares just where and how to break the rules of a conventional table setting, and the ingredients are revealed of a home-made beauty scrub given to a princess the day before her wedding. If you are looking for intrigue in this book, there is that too. A lime pickle with a closely guarded recipe is mixed when no one watches and an avowed non-vegetarian who drops into a princely home usually known for its meat unwittingly polishes off a plate of lauki kebabs. I hope you will have a bit of fun trying out these royal household secrets. I, for one, have immediately put to use tips from an interior decorator to royal houses who offers ideas on how to make a small room look big or, if you want it, formal.
Royal Reservation started as a travel show taking us to palaces, many of which, for me, were first-time discoveries. Let me share with you just one chapter from the adventure, luck and anecdotes that made the series. This is the story of our visit to one such palace and the memories I brought home from there.
A ROYAL HIGH

My first appointment with Raja Jigmed Namgyal of Ladakh is in Delhi, over coffee at Caf Coffee Day. He graciously offers me a cappuccino and says I must also have something to eat. I settle in with a coffee and cake while he takes calls on his mobile phone. From how loudly he needs to speak, I assume he s talking to someone stranded in a snowstorm in Nubhra Valley.
I imagine camps with small fires, and a wrinkly tea vendor heating yak milk in a metal pot. The call gets disconnected and I snap out of my daydream. Back to business. This is my chance to get some interview dates from Raja Jigmed. A lot can happen over coffee, promises a poster. Not for a travel journalist trying to fix shoot dates with the distinguished 62nd Chogyal descendant of warrior lineage.
Can we shoot with you this summer? I ask.
We can see, he replies.
Can we fix the dates for early August? I ask again.
He asks, Another biscuit?
Thank you. Sir, can we fix dates for the end of August?
Let me return to Ladakh. We can see.
I left that meeting with caffeine-fuelled fantasies of Ladakh and no real clarity.
Phone calls and emails back and forth didn t change much. He is a busy man. There is only one way out that I can see.
I ll just have to ambush the warrior king on his home ground.
A few weeks later, an all-girl crew of Mandakini, Ananya and I are boarding the short propeller flight to Leh. I hate flights, hate high altitudes and hate the cold. Fortunately, Mandakini is in her element when in the mountains, so she cheered me up.
In the little family-owned bed-and-breakfast somewhere in Leh town, our crew has a compulsory day of rest. I concentrate on conserving energy, moving as little as possible. I move only for the essentials-toothbrush, fork, ketchup, edge of duvet. The next day comes early and a Himalayan room without heating needs no wake-up call. We pack our gear into a jeep and drive for an hour to Stok Palace, the Namgyal residence.
I like talking about Stok Palace because most people have never heard of it. It sounds distant, exotic and makes me look like I am familiar with unusual places. Talking about Stok is one thing. Turning up there, unsure if you are expected, is quite another. High on a hill, Stok Palace seems straight out of a childhood fable. At certain angles it appears to be suspended on a cloud or magically perched on leafless willows.
We stop where the earth road ends at the palace gates. Someone finally peers through the grille. Together, the three of us head out of the car; holler press , Delhi , Raja , shooting , a jumble of keywords that miraculously throws open the palace gate. The main structure looms thick and white but for a few insanely colourful windows.
We walk up the mossy stone stairs, taking deep breaths of the fresh, thin air. Finally, we enter a courtyard guarded by two men whose glares are an excellent security enforcer. They say not a word, keep their arms folded, lips pursed and eyes fixed on us. These are not people you ask directions from, or even the way to the loo.
Perhaps I should text Raja Jigmed and say we are inside his home. Then he might send a message to the guards saying we can be allowed to pass. But as I fumble for my phone, I am stopped. International immigration would ve been less uncomfortable. Suddenly the guards speak.
Do you have the white scarf?
Sorry? The what?
The silk scarf for the Raja.
No, no. I m not a scarf-seller. You see we have this long-overdue appointment for a shoot.
You need a white scarf to meet the Raja.
Oh. I have no such thing.
But a scarf appears. I, clearly, am not the first visitor to be so hopelessly unprepared. We soon find ourselves seated on a neat row of comfortable floor cushions in a beautiful audience room replete with Chinese frescos, wood-and-enamel panels painted with clouds, birds and fables. In front of us is a long, low table with pyramids of dried apricots and milk candy heaped so high that they obstruct our view. Ananya is the first to take a piece of candy. Finding that she can neither suck on it nor bite through it, she ends up doing something in between, unable to speak for the rest of the morning. Just as well, because what happens next leaves us all rather tongue-tied.
An attendant walks in and says the Raja is here. We stand up as a procession walks in, in the middle of which is the person I had had coffee with a few weeks ago. Here he is, draped in a serious silk robe, walking right past me to take his place on an elevated throne. A throne covered in silks sits at the far end of the room at a height of several feet above us. Of course, I had seen it when I walked in but had assumed it was, as they say, just for show. Raja Jigmed is now quite literally on a different plane from the rest of us in the room. Even rooms have rarefied altitudes in Ladakh.
I am nudged to present the scarf, which I then place on the Raja s shoulders. Next comes an elaborate tea ceremony where the pourer bows many times to the Raja before pouring tea into his gilt cup. He then turns to me and, with no bows of course, tips some into my porcelain cup. The Raja takes a sip, I take a sip. What do I say? Nice seeing you again? Small talk sounds hollow in the audience room. So I stick to rehearsed questions.
Raja Jigmed starts to speak. He explains that his is a lineage of dharmarajas-princes of righteousness and keepers of the faith. He talks of his great ancestor Singhe Namgyal who traced his lineage to Tibetan conquerors who first captured Ladakh on horseback in AD 900. The short, bony Ladakhi horses that aren t much to look at have clearly brought many armies to heel. The meeting concludes, we are taken on a tour of the museum and, after our morning shoot, asked to join the Raja for lunch, which we certainly were not expecting.
The Raja who had just spoken to me as if he had never met me before when in his durbar room has us join him for lunch in the family dining room. A lady in jeans serves us some delicious curries and rice. She is the Raja s wife-casual, warm, beautiful. The only remnant of ceremony is that he eats from a very important-looking plate, totally different from ours. But that s about it. The entourage has gone and he is wearing jeans. The descent from high protocol seems to have commenced.
Soon, Mandakini, Ananya and I will be on our own. At large in Ladakh. Hitching rides from Swiss bikers speeding through a midlife crisis; stopping to pet double-humped Bactrian camels; buying carpets and horseshoes from Changthan pedlars by whom we are happily fleeced. Eventually, we will land in Delhi, where Raja Jigmed and I were once on level cappuccino terms.

The Royal Wardrobe
Picture a king, a queen, a prince or a princess and what you see right away is what they are wearing. He would be dressed in a brocade achkan maybe, quantities of emeralds for sure, a golden turban perhaps and a sarpech for certain