In Search of Amrit Kaur by Livia Manera Sambuy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

When Livia Manera Sambuy wanders into a Mumbai museum, she has no idea that this random excursion will lead to an obsession that would dominate her life for years. Among the photographs of India’s past royalty is a portrait of a stunningly beautiful young woman, Amrit Kaur. Information posted nearby identifies her as the Rani of Mandi, born a Punjabi princess, who lived in Paris during World War II. She sold her jewelry to help Jews escape from the Nazis, was arrested by the Nazis, and, the placard claimed, died in a German prison camp.

Stunned by this brief biography, Sambuy wonders why she had never heard this story before. She remains haunted by it and by the strong and beautiful face that had lived this life--or had she?

When a friend puts Sambuy in touch with Amrit’s daughter, who’s now an old woman of 78, a portion of what would prove to be an elusive truth is revealed. Amrit didn’t die in prison. She was freed within a few months, but her health was weakened, and she died seven years later in London.

“Come and see me,” the daughter says and when Sambuy makes the visit, she’s shocked to discover that “Bubbles,” as the old woman called herself, knows nothing more about her mother. Amrit had abandoned her children when Bubbles was only four years old, and never returned. The Raja of Mandi’s second wife became the woman the little girl thought of as her mother.

Even more intrigued by a woman who left her children and never looked back and by the rewritten history provided by the museum placard, Sambuy begins to delve into Amrit’s history. The daughter of a maharajah, the ruler of the Princely State of Kapurthala, Amrit was born into a world of luxury and hedonism. When the British stripped all responsibilities from the Indian princes, they allowed them to keep their wealth and titles, thereby creating what Gandhi termed “a gigantic autocracy” and the Viceroy Lord Curzon reviled as “frivolous and sometimes vicious spendthrifts and idlers.”

Amrit’s father spoke six different languages, including French, and developed a strong affinity for Paris, where he maintained a residence. Bringing elements of French architecture back to his Indian domain, he dazzled the more than 100 Europeans whom he invited to his oldest son’s wedding. Placing 240 tents in the palace gardens, he created a luxurious community for his guests, complete with a post office and a bank created for the occasion, and hosted a lunch for 800 in the midst of “bejeweled splendor.” When his only daughter was married, Amrit’s wedding was equally drenched in lavish excess.

But the maharajah had made a mistake. He had given Amrit an English education at a British boarding school and she had returned to India with revolutionary thoughts. When she was twenty-three, the beautiful and articulate rani was interviewed by the New York Herald Tribune where she championed the right for women to be educated and changing the minimum marriageable age for Indian girls. (Her own daughter would enter an arranged marriage at the age of seventeen, without complaint. But then Bubble’s father had refused to make his father-in-law’s mistake. Amrit’s daughter received her education in India, not in the West.)

A year after the interview, Amrit led a delegation of women to demand that the Indian Viceroy abolish child marriage altogether. Three years later her husband married his second wife and Amrit left him soon after.

The Raja class was reluctant to give up any of their power. Bubbles, herself the wife of the Raja of Bilkha, told Sambuy, “We printed our own money…We could hang anyone.” And their wealth was devoted to pleasure, in the same manner that once allowed the emperor who had erected the Taj Mahal to have two pairs of eyeglasses made, one with diamond lenses and the other with emerald.

Bubbles was the last of her kind to experience this extravagant life. When Indira Gandhi imposed taxes upon India’s royalty, they melted down their gold and silver furniture to meet the government’s demands. One of Amrit’s grandsons is now an auto mechanic who lives happily in Chicago.

When Sambuy tries to follow Amrit’s life in Paris, she finds it stunningly undocumented, until one day she receives a letter from a burlesque entertainer in the U.S. The woman has come into possession of a monogrammed briefcase filled with letters that were written by an Indian princess. With this some of the questions are answered--and rather shockingly--but not all. The follow-the-dots puzzle of an enigmatic life will never be fully connected.

This book is a history, not a biography, and its details are revealed in piecemeal fashion, in the way that the author discovered them. This adds to the quality of mystery that pervaded the life of Amrit Kaur but also creates a muddled narrative. Blithely skipping from Jacques Cartier learning Hindi so he could sell jewels to Indian potentates to the grisly details of life in a German concentration camp, Sambuy could have used a much more rigorous editor. 

Even so her book is a treasure trove of colorful details that will enchant future historians and enthrall anyone who has a penchant for the days of the Raj. As for Amrit, she undoubtedly rests easy, knowing that many of her secrets remain completely her own.~Janet Brown