Passion India

The Story of the Spanish Princess of Kapurthala - On 28th January, 1908, a seventeen - year - old Spanish girl, sitting atop a luxuriously caparisoned elephant, makes her entry into a small town in the north of India. The entire population is out in the streets to pay homage to the new princess with skin as white as the snows of the Himalayas. It could seem like a fairy tale but that was the wedding of the Spanish girl, Anita Delgado, to the incredibly wealthy Maharajah of Kapurthala. And there commenced a great story of love and betrayal that spread over nearly two decades in the heart of an India that was on the point of vanishing. After a thorough research in Europe and India, Javier Moro reveals with exciting details the secrets of that relationship which culminated in one of the biggest scandals ever to rock colonial society in British India. And he takes us to the fabulous world of the Maharajahs, with their harems of the Thousand and One Nights, their erotic parties, their passion for jewellery, palaces, flamenco, horses, Rolls Royces and tiger hunts. "If at the end I chose to write a novel," says the author, "it is not because I needed to invent anything but the opposite, I wanted to better render the flavour of a time, as well as the colours and the smells of India, the eccentricities of the last maharajahs and the irresistible personality of Anita Delgado, faithful to her feelings until she was able to conquer her own freedom."