Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
confinement in a distant wing of the palace on occasions, I learned.
Confinement actually meant being locked up.
'Forcibly?'
'He must be kept on bed with chains.'
'Oh.' I felt I'd rather not know what the cousin was liable to do
during such periods if he managed to escape from his chains and
prison.
The tour was starting to depress me profoundly when we finally
arrived at two imposing and ornately carved wooden doors. Surely
whatever lay behind them had to be grander than the warren of old
garages we'd been visiting?
'Darbhar hall,' announced the rajkumar grandly, throwing open
these vast doors to reveal a room of spectacular proportions, lined
on either side by a colonnade of towering alabaster pillars. These
led toward a raised dais upon which perched a solid silver jula, a
kind of swinging seat two yards square suspended from an intricately
worked silver frame. It was like a piece of garden furniture
commissioned by Kublai Khan. Padded with mouldy crimson velvet
cushions and bolsters, it swung on gilded chains and had to contain a
ton of silver, every inch of it swarming with bas-relief scenes from
the
Ramayana
and flowing patterns inlaid with jewels and gold.
This was where the rajkumar's father would have sat holding
his
court, particularly on holy days and other special occasions. Clearly
no one had sat in this jula for decades. The cushions looked as if
they would disintegrate into dust if even touched.
Beyond the soaring pillars, in roomlike areas where guards and
servants would once have stood, ceilings had literally collapsed in
places, lying in untidy heaps of rubble no one had bothered to clear
away. But all over the large central area facing the royal dais had
been placed the family treasures - presumably for my pleasure. A
dozen servants bowed as we entered, all of them out of sync, and
beamed with pride.
Sorrow would have been a more appropriate response.
Everywhere posed victims of the most untalented taxidermist ever
to have possessed sawdust and a sewing kit: faded dusty tigers so
long and thin that they resembled giant weasels; gazelles
proportioned like obese ostriches, bursting at the seams in places;
