Original subtitles

- [Man] How's it going then?

- Just a minute.

(soft instrumental music)

Oh, this is the wrong place, it's quite wrong.

It will have to be moved.

- It's a bit late to tell me now, isn't it?

- [Princess] It's in the way of all my preparations.

- Come on!

- [Princess] Be careful.

- [Man] Where are we going?

- Watch those photographs, be careful.

- [Man] All right.

- Turn around.

- Look, watch it!

This is expensive equipment.

Cost me my job if anything happens to this.

- Could you plug it in in there, please?

- Thank you very much.

- Would you thread this?

- Look, I've got to be in South Croydon by half past four.

(soft music)

- Could you center it and test it please?

That will do.

- Thanks very much.

- Thank you, you've done very well.

You can call for it in the morning,

but not before 11, please.

- We'll have to see about that, depends on my day.

- Thank you, you've been very kind.

(doorbell ringing)

The door's open, come right up.

(soft music)

- Ah, Cyril Sahib.

It's wonderful to see you.

Come on up.

How was your journey?

- Ugh!

- I'm sure, that dreadful little train from Turton.

Come and sit down, this is your chair.

There.

I want you to be absolutely comfortable.

Oops!

Put this here, and this for your back.

There.

Aww, it's just wonderful to see you on our day.

- My dear Princess.

- Our very own day.

It's been exactly one year,

and you look just the same.

Exactly the same, you haven't aged one day.

- You are younger, more beautiful than ever.

- Aww, of course, of course.

I'm going to make your tea now, everything is ready.

No, I don't want you to move,

I absolutely forbid it.

- [Cyril] Where's Raju?

- Raju, gone with the wind.

I don't need Raju anyway.

There's no point in bringing servants from India these days.

They just stay with you for a little while.

Then they say, may I go walk in the park?

Or I want to start an Indian restaurant.

I have a maid.

She comes on Monday.

I think I'm going to have to change her day,

because when she comes on Monday,

she's still suffering from her weekend celebrations.

And here I am.

I had so much trouble with this

dreadful garland again this year.

These English florists, they simply do not know

how to make a garland.

I had to show the girl myself.

This is good Darjeeling tea.

Here we go.

You simply can't tear yourself away, can you?

- He certainly was a handsome man.

- Oh Cyril Sahib.

Handsome?

Papa was.

He was.

He was just tops.

- [Cyril] Quite.

- In everything.

Well, shall we drink a toast to our birthday boy?

In tea?

Drinking to Papa in tea?

He would have had a good laugh at that.

- He was always amused by my drinking habits.

Or I should say my non-drinking habits.

A mild man, that's what he called me.

- How is Turton-on-the-sea?

And the research?

- Turton is quiet and mild, which is appropriate.

And the research is coming along, slowly along.

I shall have a book one of these days.

- You know the book I want you to write.

Well, everything is ready, you see,

for our annual birthday treat.

I have the tapes of the interviews as well.

- Would you like me to--

- No, I don't want you to move.

Such a nice young man from the BBC brought them over.

And he said I could keep them for as along as I like.

- I wish you'd let me help you.

- Have some more tea.

And have one of the samosas.

Come on, I know you like them.

- All right.

- I do hope the film doesn't break

like it did last year.

They are so old and brittle, some of them.

(projector running)

I keep meaning to have them restored,

but I don't know what exactly to do.

- Ah, look at him.

- This is just so precious.

It's just got to be saved.

Because when it's gone, everything's gone.

Ummmm, that was a good team wasn't it?

But polo wasn't quite Papa's favorite sport.

He thought it was rather tame.

What is it that he used to say?

Sitting on a horse to run after a ball?

Of course when Papa sat on a horse,

it wasn't to run after a ball.

This was more his kind of sport.

People came from all over India,

all over the world.

Once there was this royal visitor from England.

And, um, he couldn't shoot very well.

And he hit a tiger, he wounded it,

And then he let him get away,

which of course is very dangerous.

So Papa decided that he would go after the tiger.

And he wouldn't let anyone go with him except

Purushjin, his favorite chicarrie.

And they searched for the tiger the whole day.

They were just about to turn back,

when the tiger surprised them.

And he mauled Purushjin

And he would have killed him.

But of course Papa took out his gun and he shot him.

And Papa and the tiger were

just less than one foot away from each other.

Papa called that the closest shave he'd ever had.

And afterwards the tiger's skin

was hung up in Papa's study.

It was a beauty.

Of course, Purushjin died of his wounds afterwards.

Which was a tragedy.

But Papa was very generous with his widow.

You know how he was.

No wonder the poor just adored him.

Hmmmm, pig sticking.

That was his favorite sport of all.

He called that a real man's sport.

He used to say that there's nothing between

you and the pig except steady hands, steady nerves

and a brave heart.

(fast drumbeat)

I think what he really loved was danger.

That was his sport whether it was animals or airplanes.

(oompah band music)

He was one of the first princes to get a pilot's license.

And ours was one of the first aerodromes in the country.

That was such a great day for him.

The inauguration of the hangar.

We were all terrified out of our wits

whenever Papa went out to fly.

Especially after Bajahpur was killed in his plane.

We thought after that Papa would be more careful,

but not at all.

He said, when your time has come, it has come.

Sir John Steele.

He came down specially from Delhi

for the inauguration ceremonies.

That was such a big party.

Papa loved parties, he had such fun.

Papa loved fun.

He never spared any expense.

Quails from Isfahan, fireworks, champagne.

And jokes, Papa loved jokes and making people laugh.

Once he made an apple pie bed with his own hands

for the English resident, Sir Philip Croft.

In the morning at breakfast he asked Sir Philip,

"Well, Sir Philip, I hope you had a good night."

And Sir Philip said, "Excellent Your Highness,

thanks to your very personal efforts."

(laughing)

Ah, Sir Philip had such a sense of humor.

Which is not something that can

be said for a lot of the Indian princes.

Stuffy nabobs.

Just having a good time.

Then, when Papa used to go to London,

he would buy out all the joke shops

on Tottenham Court Road, and he always

came back with these trunk fulls of

squeaking cushions and exploding cigars

and things like that.

Of course here were a few accidents

because of his sense of humor.

But he always made it up to people afterwards.

(soft music)

- Is that Prince Impooshi?

- No.

Yes it is Prince Impooshi.

Because there's Uncle Rajman,

and he wasn't there for the wedding.

Those weddings.

People came for a month and stayed for three,

with all their servants naturally.

(soft music)

Poor Bubbly.

She's in Mexico now with that person she married.

He is still in that sanitarium.

- You didn't tell me that.

- [Princess] He used to be such a good

wonderful rider and dancer.

- Poor boy.

- This is the suite that was done up in '38

for the Jesalmay wedding.

Of course all those frescoes are very valuable now.

Art Deco.

They were designed by a German artist.

- Austrian.

- Oh yes, and his name was Paul Merkler.

He was really amazing.

He could turn his hand to anything.

He sewed the curtains for the royal ballroom.

And he designed a new uniform for the palace guard.

He stayed with us for 15 years.

And we thought he'd stay with us forever.

I don't know what happened.

One day he just suddenly decided

to go back to Germany.

After 15 years.

And he was in the middle of

doing these terrazzo murals

for the indoor swimming pool.

He left it all unfinished.

The whole scene, the mythological scene

with Neptune and mermaids.

Are you tired?

- No, no, not at all, no.

- We'll take a break, shall we?

Cyril Sahib, what is your book about?

- You ask me that every year and in your Christmas card.

- Aw, I forget.

Oh, I remember.

It's about the life of some Englishman.

- Dennis.

- Who lived in Assam for donkey's years.

- 35 years, and not in Assam, Orissa.

He made the most comprehensive record

of local history, songs and poetry

that was ever assembled.

An enormously valuable work.

But at the same time, he was a first-class

administrator who left his district

one of the most prosperous and progressive in the country.

- Wonderful, but what about the other book?

Our book.

Well then if you don't write it, who will?

All this material will just vanish into thin air.

It would be such a loss to humanity.

What's left of royal India except what

people like us remember?

We owe it to posterity to put it all down.

It's a sacred debt.

I want you to see these interviews

that the young man from the BBC brought over.

I told you about them.

They were shown on the BBC about a month ago.

When I saw them, I just cried and cried.

I said to myself, you silly goose.

What is there to cry for?

That's the way it is now.

(soft music)

- [Narrator] They were like children

playing on a private beach.

King of the castle, but their castles were made of sand,

and the rising tide of democracy swept away

power, position and privilege.

They ran to higher ground, but it was lonely there,

as one, the former Maharani of Jaipur, discovered.

- As the atmosphere is today, we as princes

are public enemy number one, on the one hand.

Whereas on the other hand, we still have our

traditional support.

And as far as the local people are concerned,

they still look up to you for some kind of a lead.

So it's in that context that I have to find a way,

or how to justify this support, this loyalty.

- You don't possibly recognize anyone, do you?

And in my passport, of course, they took away my titles,

but they've even taken away my husband's,

which I think is absolutely ridiculous.

- I prefer it as it is now

because one is becoming more in contact with the people.

Because you have to lead your own life,

you mix in far more, you get to know far more

about how people live.

Whereas before you were rather aloof

and on a sort of pedestal.

People had to look at you, you couldn't meet people easily.

You couldn't go out, couldn't mix.

- [Narrator] But India's royalty would be

roughly tumbled from that pedestal.

The former Maharani of Jaipur.

Were the any aspects of the government's controversial

policy with which she felt in sympathy?

- Well, you know, I couldn't really say so.

I would have been, had they not done it in the way they did.

There were certain privileges the princes had

which were rather unnecessary,

like red number plates and all that sort of thing.

So that was perhaps an anachronism,

but to do away with the allowances

I think was very unfair.

Just one or two of this things that,

but no, not really.

- [Interviewer] Could you tell me,

what is the reaction of the peasants

to the retainers of the this new regime?

- Well, strangely enough, even though we haven't got

any power anymore, they still love and respect one.

They don't understand why this should have happened to us.

But of course, gradually, they are being taught

by the Congress workers

to disrespect and to say that these people

are really nobody at all and why you shouldn't respect them.

But basically, in their hearts,

that love is still there and that trust,

which is really very gratifying.

- Jagat, in terms of your life,

what do these new measures mean?

- It means that we've moved to smaller houses,

smaller palaces.

I've changed, in fact, about three times now.

And I'm now living in a much smaller place

with a staff of my own.

This is because we have to live in as many

separate houses as possible,

so that we can keep them

and stop them from being confiscated by the government.

- At that time, I just kind of,

when I was going abroad and coming back,

it was really very much of a game.

Because,

I could come back, and somewhere on the airplane,

I'd sort of turn a switch in my mind, and I'd become Indian.

And when I went back again, same thing.

Turn a switch in my mind, and I'd become English.

It was a good game while it lasted,

but as I grew older, it began to dawn on me

that I had to make choices.

Between what I wanted to retain in one system,

what is good in one system,

and what is good in the other system.

And um,

well I'm still in that position now.

More so than ever.

- [Narrator] But the time for games would soon be over.

The palaces and ancient privileges of the Maharajas

were guaranteed, they thought, forever.

From the schools and ski slopes of Europe,

they hurried home, prepared for battle,

but it was already too late.

- I thought I had about a couple of years,

not being old enough to stand for election,

to review the situation.

But then Mrs. Gandhi surprised us all

with this midterm election.

And, really then the whole country took two sides,

pro and anti Mrs. Gandhi,

perhaps we were wrong in doing that.

We should have not really made it

a referendum for Mrs. Gandhi.

But even so, at that time,

it was felt by most of us here,

that we had to do something, and to stand.

And to be left out of it would be not doing our duty.

And therefore, without really knowing

what we were going into, I persuaded my mother

to stand for election.

And out of the five seats that we contested,

she was the only one that got through.

So whether I like it or not,

today I'm directly or indirectly involved in politics.

- [Narrator] But even mothers cannot turn back the tide.

Democracy and Mrs. Gandhi won.

The Maharajas, stripped of their titles and stipends

by an amendment to India's constitution, must learn to swim.

To swim in currents that are unfamiliar,

cold, and sometimes dangerous.

(crowd yelling)

- One can't really choose a career when you're

in a situation like I am at the moment.

It's no point saying that I want to be a painter,

because probably, it's impossible for me to say

I want to be a painter or a banker.

There are things one has to do, and one maybe will have

to go back to Jaipur and work there.

- If you had a choice, how would you distribute your time?

- Well I'd live about six or seven months

of the year in Jaipur, then I'd like to travel.

I love coming over to England because I was born here.

I have a lot of friends here, so it's always nice

to see them, and I also like seeing new places.

This time, I went to the Far East for the first time.

I'd like to go around the world traveling,

but hate being a tourist, so I'd like knowing people

in the places that I go to,

so you can see the place through their eyes

and see how they live there.

And the rest of the time, traveling, a little bit

of the time in America, and I do like a bit of sea life.

And I used to love skiing.

If I could get back in, that would be ideal, my ideal.

(projector running)

Well, who was he, anyway,

this Dennis Leaver, that you should spend

so much time and work on him?

- He was an Englishman in India.

- My goodness, there were enough of those.

Papa just had to snap his fingers,

and they would come running.

To shoot our tigers and drink our liquor.

How they drank.

Scotch and claret for breakfast.

And port and champagne all night.

- Dennis Leaver was not entertained by Maharajas.

He was too busy sinking wells and building schools.

What spare time he had, he spent riding around the country.

He sat for days and nights with the villagers,

to listen to their stories and their songs.

Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to

complete his magnum opus.

He died in '17 of cholera,

the year before he was due to retire.

His work had to be published posthumously.

- How long were you in India, Cyril Sahib?

- A long time.

- And always with us.

You were one of us.

And the British never liked it.

Papa had fearful rows with them about you.

Sir Philip wanted to appoint

a British officer as Papa's tutor.

And later on, when Papa made you his private secretary,

they were all furious, it went right up to the viceroy.

They put terrible pressure on Papa.

But he stuck up for you.

He was loyal.

He prized loyalty above everything else, and that is why

he was so disappointed when people failed him.

As they often did.

When Paul Merkler

wanted to leave after all those years,

Papa offered him everything, just to make him stay.

But he wouldn't.

Papa was so hurt.

He said, he didn't love us as we loved him.

- Paul Merkler came to my room one day.

It was in the afternoon, it was a very hot day.

And there'd been a dust storm blowing for several days.

Outside the palace windows, you couldn't see anything

except the sun and the dust and the desert,

and Paul said to me, he just couldn't stand it any longer.

He only wanted to leave and to go home.

He didn't have to say much to me

because I knew only too well what he was talking about.

I too had been in India for a long time.

- [Princess] Oh, but always with us.

- No, no, no, wait, please.

I know that I was living in undreamed of luxury.

I was living in a palace, waited on hand and foot.

I was eating rich food.

I had all the time in the world to do everything I wanted.

Read, write, study, everything.

Only,

only most of the time,

I did nothing.

I just lay on my soft bed, and I felt that I was

rotting of heat, and boredom.

When I first came out to be your father's tutor,

I thought that I would never want to go home.

I just wanted to be in India, to be part of India.

I dressed up in Indian clothes.

His highness showered silk turbines

and brocade coats on me,

and even dressed me up in them himself.

Then stood back and had a hearty laugh at my expense.

I don't doubt I looked quite ridiculous.

I learned to eat curry with my fingers,

to chew beetle, even to smoke a hookah.

I sat on the floor cross-legged with the other courtiers,

and we were playing rough and tumble games like boys.

We played card games for high stakes,

and cheated like anything.

Then, I don't know what happened.

Why it stopped being fun.

(projector running)

Although, at the beginning, I was excited

by all the processions and ceremonies.

After a while, they all seemed the same.

Marriages, birthdays, funerals.

Always crowds, always very hot.

One day, I fainted.

Had to be carried back to the palace.

His highness showed such kindness and concern.

He left the ceremony and all his guests

just to inquire after me and to sit by my bedside.

I was never allowed to go out in the sun again after that.

All those crowds.

Crowds, city streets.

Full of crowds, and there was a lot of waiting.

Waiting for hours in that hot sun, everybody had to wait,

his highness included.

He accepted it, it was part of the ceremony.

And there was a great deal of confusion.

Moments when nobody seemed to know

exactly what was supposed to happen next.

And they would argue about it.

This is the way it always has been done, no,

that is the way and so on.

Sometimes the elephant hadn't turned out.

Or the mahuts were missing.

Our Rolls-Royce had a puncture,

and the man who knew how to fix it

had chosen to go that day to the hospital

to visit his elder brother.

Now this, you see, I don't know what's going on.

You'd have thought that, as the years went by,

all these ceremonies would become more familiar to me,

but not at all.

They became more mystifying, more mysterious.

I was able less and less to keep them apart,

marriages, birthdays, funerals.

They all seemed to come together somehow.

You know, like parts of the same process.

This box, now what is it?

Oh, I think it's the dowager queen

being carried to some ceremony.

Oh no, it appears to be a funeral.

(soft music)

What is this?

Ah yes, this is one of the birthday weighing ceremonies.

Afterwards, the gold or the silver would be distributed

among the poor, and this,

this is not a palace.

This is the cenotaph of his highness's father.

This too, cenotaph.

You see, the ashes of a king had to be palatially housed,

but it was a little disconcerting not to know

if the palace was occupied by a live king or a dead one.

Oh, I remember this.

This is the cenotaph of the dead queen.

This is where they brought them after their purdah lives

in the purdah palaces were finished.

This is the other side of the coin, you might say.

It was more quiet, more lonely, more

silent

than any other place I know on Earth.

There was nothing there except a few vultures.

I always used to imagine that the cenotaphs themselves

looked rather like vultures or some

extinct species of bird come to roost in the desert.

I was haunted by this place.

I used to think about it at the oddest moments,

for instance when these singing and dancing girls

came to visit the palace,

I would be thinking about those poor dead queens out there.

Perhaps it was because these songs that the girls sang

were not as gay as they were supposed to be,

and I thought they were rather sad, actually.

I thought the girls were rather sad

in their tawdry dresses, many of them

no longer in their first youth.

What happens to a singing girl when she gets old?

I once asked his highness that question, and he said,

they die of pox in the bazaar.

And he laughed.

So I

supposed that he was joking

- Well ours wasn't a very backward state,

not compared with some of the others.

- That's true, yes, there were worse.

- Much worse.

When you think of Tantpur, they were living

in the Dark Ages.

Terrible things happened there.

Child sacrifices, terrible horrible things,

and so many cases of Sati,

and we hardly had any Sati at all.

- What about your great aunt?

- That was different, I mean it wasn't religious.

But because she loved her husband.

And when he died, she just didn't want to live anymore.

All the people who were there said it was just beautiful,

the way she climbed onto the funeral pyre

and lay down beside the corpse, sacred and beautiful.

The reason why ours was such a progressive state

was because of Papa.

He had such a modern mind.

And he couldn't stand all those old superstitions.

He would have swept them all away if he'd had a free hand.

But he was hampered all the time by the old traditions.

The old priests, and those aunts,

and all those orthodox people.

He tried, but how much can you do single-handed?

How much could he do?

One thing he did insist upon,

and then nobody could stand in his way.

And that was about me, my education.

For that, I shall be eternally grateful.

What he did for his motherless child.

Can you imagine, Cyril Sahib,

if it hadn't been for him,

I would have been like all the others.

My entire life spent in a purdah palace.

Never going out, except in a closed carriage,

with family servants before and behind.

And then what would I have done?

Afterwards, what would have become of me?

It's as if he foresaw all of that,

as if he knew that I would have to stand

on my own two feet, as if he knew it.

And when I was four, he sent for my first

English governess, Miss Simpkins, from Shropshire.

I still remember the fearful row my aunts made

when I had to go off to school in Switzerland.

But he insisted, he wouldn't budge.

And then when I was 15,

my aunts, they wanted me to come back and get married,

but he sent me off to England to a boarding school instead.

He wouldn't even let me come home for the halls

for fear they would get at me.

Of course,

all those years that I was in boarding school,

I was very homesick.

I see how wise he was.

Because,

this way,

I could become a truly independent woman.

And take my place in the modern world.

Along with

everyone else.

Well, I'm going to make some more tea now.

(soft music)

(dramatic music)

I won't be a jiffy, it's just brewing.

Mmm, those were taken at the time of the princes assembly.

The newspapers made such a fuss over him.

India's Fairy Prince, they called him.

Beside him, all these other Indian princes

cut such a sorry figure, poor things.

That is why they were all so jealous of him.

And when he had his trouble, there wasn't one

of them that stood up for him.

But he didn't mind about them.

He knew they weren't his friends, never had been.

He minded when he felt betrayed by people

whom he thought were his friends.

I'll never forget the way he said about Paul Merkler.

He didn't love us as we loved him.

I know you were very fond of him.

But if you had loved him as he loved you,

wouldn't you have spoken up for him at that time?

You had known him longer than anyone else,

you could have told them.

- What, what could I have told them, Princess?

- That he was innocent.

That he wasn't capable of anything base.

He was a king, through and through.

There wasn't a power on Earth that could depose him.

And in spite of all the things they wrote in their papers,

in the people's hearts, he was still the Maharaja.

No little tribunal or commission could take

that away from him.

Don't look at that.

- [Cyril] Those are your wedding pictures.

- I hate them.

It's one thing that I can't forgive him for.

I mustn't say that.

He was thinking only of my own good.

How was he to know that Bernie wasn't going to turn out

to be the most wonderful husband in the world?

He wasn't a bad sort really.

Just weak.

And spoiled.

Like the rest of his family.

Of course Papa took opium too,

but he knew how to control himself when necessary.

Bernie would go mad, absolutely insane

when he couldn't get the stuff.

He wasn't bad looking.

But nothing, nothing compared to Papa.

Let's see this.

Oh, that's a good picture of Papa.

That was all a frame-up.

He was completely innocent.

Everybody knew that.

They were just common criminals, common blackmailers.

And to take away his throne

because of two creatures like that,

he should have shot that woman.

Well why don't you speak?

When it's time for your to speak, then you're silent.

Now, and at that time,

and don't think he didn't notice it.

He may not have said anything, he was very proud for that,

but he felt it, I know.

Just another stab in the back.

- You mustn't say that to me.

- [Princess] It's true, you can't deny it.

- I can deny it.

- [Princess] You can't.

If you cared for him, you would have stuck up for him.

- And if I had, who would have listened to me?

Who was I, I was just an Englishman who had stayed

in India too long, I was his,

his highness's creature.

- No one called you that.

- [Cyril] Not aloud perhaps.

- We all loved and respected you.

You were part of our family.

- I came out for one year.

I really seriously intended to go home.

My college had offered me a fellowship,

and I was supposed to write a thesis

about some very serious subject.

By the end of the year, I said,

next year, and then again, next year.

And by the end of that time,

I found I couldn't live without him.

I couldn't let him out of my sight

for more than an hour at a time.

He knew this perfectly well, and he loved to tease me,

so he'd take off day after day until,

he'd finally come back and he'd say to me,

where were you, Cyril Sahib?

I looked for you everywhere.

And if I reproached him, he laughed.

Then he'd be off again for another week.

And by the end of that time,

I was so frantic, and I made scenes like a woman.

And this amused him for a time, but finally he,

he got bored, and avoided me.

He just made jokes about me to his hangers-on.

- He fought for you.

He stuck up for you against all those people

and the viceroy.

- Whenever there was a party of Englishmen

visiting the palace, I would be sent for.

And when I tried to withdraw, because I didn't like them

any more than they liked me, as well he knew,

when I tried to go, he wouldn't let me.

And afterwards he would say with that innocent air,

that he always had when you knew that something

was going to hurt a person, he would say,

why do they hate you so?

I didn't answer him, so he went on needling me.

He would say, is it because you're not good at games?

Is it that you can't shoot straight

or you can't even sit properly on a horse?

Once he said, Mrs. Purblack says you are a degenerate.

What is a degenerate, he asked me.

But he always knew when he'd gone too far,

and then he would change completely and

become the soul of kindness.

And then he'd show such delicate personal attentions,

as only he knew how.

One really did feel

loved.

And it was genuine.

When the telegram arrived, for instance,

to say that my mother had died,

he wouldn't leave my sight for days on end.

He slept in my room,

I on the bed, he at the foot of it,

and he sent for an Anglican priest

all the way from Ambala, because he said

he wanted me to have the comfort of my religion.

Sat all the way through the service, weeping like a child.

But very often,

I was afraid of him.

Now, there were lots of things that I was afraid of

for no particular reason.

Maybe it was because I began to feel that

everything was alien to me, strange, alien.

Ceremonies, priests, idols.

(dramatic music)

An alien land.

There was a temple that was sacred to the rat.

I found it difficult to go near the place

or even think of it.

I started to very careful about myself.

I became very fussy about what food I ate,

drinking only boiled water,

and swallowing quantities of quinine.

I felt that I had somehow to protect myself,

so heaven knows, what I was protecting myself

from, and there were sports events

and religious festivals,

all mixed up in my mind, my dreams too.

There was a festival in honor of the goddess Kali.

This called for two goats and a young bull.

(cannon firing)

(dramatic music)

(cannon firing)

(cannon firing)

- Many foreigners don't understand our Indian philosophy.

There's creation, and destruction.

And both are aspects of life.

- Yes, well I could never understand that, nor accept it.

Any more than I could accept what was happening to him.

- People grow older.

Everybody does.

It would all be wonderful if we could stay young

and beautiful forever.

- But he changed so much, his whole face.

- It was that woman.

If I wasn't a modern person, I'd say that she used spells.

Some people said that.

How else could she have such a hold over him?

How is it possible?

- He was always, forgive me, Princess, very susceptible.

- Well at least all the others had something.

Even Sultana, she was a movie star,

she had looks and she had talent to attract him.

But this common Englishwoman,

a person from the lowest class.

She was despicable.

Do you know that she's still alive?

And she has the impudence to write me begging letters?

When I receive them, I just tear them up

and my hands feel soiled.

- What about the man?

- Oh, he disappeared long ago.

I don't believe he was a husband at all.

It was all just a plot to try and entrap Papa.

I wish he'd shot them both.

One time in his life that he missed.

- Thank God he did, thank God.

- What worse thing could they have done to him

than already was done?

I begged him that time.

I said, Papa, please don't go to London now.

Let's go in June for Ascot.

It was as if I had some kind of premonition.

But no, he insisted.

He followed that creature to London,

and then everything happened.

He fell into their trap.

(dramatic music)

(gunshot)

- They called it The Shot that Shattered the Throne.

They love a headline.

Oh, I must be getting along.

- Oh not yet.

We have so much yet to talk about.

It's pure selfishness on my part.

I know you have to get back to Turton.

- I like to be sure of finding a seat on the train.

- I don't suppose anyone ever offers you a seat.

Wouldn't occur to them.

Well, you just have to learn to push these days.

I do it.

- [Cyril] What are you doing, Princess?

- I insist, you're not to say no.

This will do nicely for your supper.

- Well, it will save a bit of cooking.

- It is a shame that you have no one to look after you.

- Oh, I manage all right.

There's Mrs. Parish who comes in once a week

to do the cleaning, or rather she used to.

She's laid up now.

- These people are always laid up, aren't they?

We just have to learn to manage, don't we?

- [Cyril] Oh Princess, please.

- This will do for tomorrow's lunch as well.

I do wish you stayed in town.

This way I could stop and visit you.

Must be very lonely for you out there.

- Not at all, I keep busy.

I have my research, my bit of writing,

my walks by the sea.

Sometimes, you know, I imagine that it's not the sea at all

but the desert at Rajasthan,

which is quite as endless as the sea.

You may laugh at me, but sometimes at my age

it's not easy to distinguish between the past

and the present, the desert and the sea.

- I forgot, I've been saving it for you.

Oh, it won't take any time, and you'll just love it.

You know when I was home last,

I went to see Berni Mutibai.

- [Cyril] But she must be over 80.

- Ah, and better than ever, you'll see.

Of course, like a lot of these older court musicians,

she's living in very straightened circumstances now.

I was so sad at first when I saw her in that place.

Just a part of the palace stables,

or perhaps it's part of the sweeper's quarters, anyway,

it's just a little hole in the wall.

And she has nothing there, except a mat to sleep on

and an old cooking pot.

She's all alone, and she suffers terribly from gallstones.

But gay as a bird, she's happy about everything.

As if all the wonderful things that happened

to her in the past are still there.

With better ones yet to come.

(singing in foreign language)

Oh let me help you.