Click to play videoNew Delhi: Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, maharajas and maharanis lived a good life and apparently merrily traipsing all over the world with all kinds of luxury goods on demand.
And now, to give us a glimpse into that world, there's a new, gorgeously crafted coffee table book called Made For Maharajas: A Design Diary of Princely India.
"Some nostalgia, the pictures pick up on that but the real meat of the book is how these Indian princes went and took Europe by storm. Indeed, during the great depression it was many of these princes who kept these luxury houses afloat," says the curator at Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Dr Amin Jaffer.
The author, Dr Jaffer says he's been collecting information on princely India for the last 10 years, but the book itself is some two years in the making.
Editor Priya Kapoor puts in the photo research, and the book certainly delivers the goods - including information from archives, letters, and private documents, which complement the arty photographs.
Following launches in London and New York, the recent launch in the Capital lived up to the subject.
And speaking of royalty, the props were also something else – a suitcase from a royal collection - something that would cost about 8 lakh today.
It also had a travel tea trunk - definitely not meant to be battered around on a modern day no-frills flight!
The book is nothing if not frills and extravagance, and at 276 pages, it comes at price fit for kings but hey if you've got the Rs 4,500/- to spare, it even comes in its own case.
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