The Dancer and the Raja (39 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At the beginning of the 1980s, my friend the film producer Felix Tusell spoke to me for the first time about the story of a Spanish woman who had married a maharaja. For a lover of India like myself, this was clearly a very attractive subject. Felix gave me a folder full of old photos, newspaper articles, and a copy of Anita Delgado's book,
Impressions de mes voyages en Inde
, and he proposed that I should write the screenplay for a film. I set to work and, while Felix took his family on holiday to Kenya, I wrote the first draft. But he never read it, because he never came back from that trip. He died in a car accident on the road between Mombasa and Nairobi. Here, from these pages, I dedicate my fondest memories to him.

I left the project sitting there for over twenty years, until Ana Rosa Semprún put me on the track again, for which I am very grateful. As I am to my editors Adolfo García Ortega and Elena Ramírez, for their trust and encouragement during the long months of writing.

A book like this cannot be written without the help and support of many people. I want to thank Dominique Lapierre for the encouragement he has always given me to write about his friends the maharajas. Thanks also to Larry Levene for the enthusiasm he gave me and for his shrewd corrections.

I want to express my enormous gratitude to Elisa Vázquez de Gey, the author of
Anita Delgado, Maharani de Kapurthala
(Planeta, 1997) for her generosity in sharing information, ideas, and contacts. Without her aid, my work would have been much harder. Thanks too to Laura Garrido, Bernadette Lapierre, Carlos and Carolina Moro, Christian and Patricia Boyer, and Cristina Reguera of Air India in Madrid.

In New Delhi, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Amitabh Kant, joint secretary, Ministry of Tourism in India, for his valuable and always efficient help. And our old friends Kamal Pareek, Arvind and Jaya Shrivastava, Ashwini Kumar, Francis Wacziarg and Aman Nath, Niloufar Khan, and Shahernaz Masood. Thanks to Karan Singh, the son of the maharaja of Kashmir, and to Madhukar Shah, the heir to the House of Orccha, for their warm reception as well as to all the members of the royal family of Kapurthala who agreed to tell us their story: Princess Usha, Martand Singh, Anita Singh, Vishwajit Singh, Sukhjit Singh, and Satrujit Singh … Thanks too to Rakesh and Sushila Dass for allowing me to use some of their unpublished photos. In the Punjab, I would like to thank Madan Gopal Singh, formerly chief of police of Kapurthala, Shivdular Dhillon of Patiala, and Jagjit Puri, head of the Tourism Office in Chandighar. In Bombay, all my thanks to Delna Jasoomoney and the Taj Group of Hotels for their support and help.

In London, I am very grateful to Charles Allen, the author of the most exhaustive books written about the princes of India, such as
Lives of the Indian Princes
or
Raj: A
Scrapbook of British India
, for his contacts, his advice, and his friendly welcome.

Finally, thanks to Aurélie Marionez, Susana Garcés, and the KLM airline company, who made all the research for this book possible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Javier Moro (Madrid, 1955) is the author of
Senderos de libertad (Paths of F
reedom)
(Seix Barral, 1992),
El pie de Jaipur (The Jaipur Foot)
(Seix Barral, 1995),
La mundialización de la pobreza (The Globalization of Poverty)
(1999) and
Las montañas de Buda (The
Mountains of Buddha)
(Seix Barral, 1997), and coauthor, with Dominique Lapierre, of
Era medianoche en Bhopal (Midnight in Bhopal)
(Planeta, 2001).

Grupo Planeta, a leading Spanish publishing and communications company, is family owned and offers a broad range of products in the service of culture, learning, news, and audiovisual entertainment. Editorial Planeta, founded in Barcelona in 1949 by José Manuel Lara Hernández, combines a solid business tradition with a strong capacity for innovation and a multinational reach.

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