Glimpses of Gayatri for home Cooch Behar

Jaipur, Aug. 1: As Maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi would go back to her native Cooch Behar every year to relive her childhood days.

Now Cooch Behar will get to see how one of the world’s most beautiful queens spent her days there.

An exhibition of rare, unseen pictures of Gayatri Devi, especially of her days in Cooch Behar, will soon be put up in the former north Bengal princely state for people to get a glimpse of her lifestyle and work.

The exhibition will also travel to Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai this year, making it a year-round affair, said author Dharmendra Kanwar, the managing trustee of the Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh Benevolent Trust that will organise the shows.

Kanwar, who has authored several books on Gayatri Devi and was close to her, said she used to visit Cooch Behar every year and stay for three to four days. “Though many of her personal maids and servants in Cooch Behar Palace were no more, she would connect with their relatives. She even accepted lunch and dinner invitations from the older staff and never hesitated to visit their small dwellings. Her lineage never came in the way. That is why she could be termed People’s Princess.”

Kanwar said Gayatri Devi, who died aged 90, always reminisced about her days in Cooch Behar. In one of her interviews, she had said: “When I close my eyes, I recall my happiest days were as a child in Cooch Behar. Those were days of innocence…. When I would go shooting, I would plead with the mahout to let me sit on the neck of the elephant. There I used to lie down, my head between the elephant’s ears. At dusk, I would come home riding on my elephant. When I remember this moment, it takes me back to a time when my life was untouched by change and the loss of people dearest to me.”

Gayatri Devi was born on May 23, 1919, and was the fourth child in a family of five brothers and sisters. She shot her first panther when she was 12 and went on to kill at least 27 more before she turned into a conservationist.

In her biography, A Princess Remembers: the Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi says she does not have many recollections of her father Jitendra Narayan who died young when he was just 36.

She writes about a “mental picture of him standing in front of the fire in the drawing-room…. He was wearing his dressing gown and held a glass of whisky in his hand. He was very tall — nearly all the men in the Cooch Behar family are over six feet — and extremely handsome.”

Kanwar says Gayatri Devi’s childhood was influenced by her mother Indira Devi.

In many of her interviews, Gayatri Devi had said: “My mother has been my role model and icon. When I was young, I watched her dress. Ma was very fussy about her clothes…. But her greatest passion was for shoes…. She always knew the best place to buy anything and she shopped all over the world. I guess, I learnt about style from her.”