Secrets perched on a hill

The Field Club in Udaipur lies way outside the beautiful city. Come to think of it, there isn’t a single town or city in Rajasthan that is  not touched by magic — from Udaipur all the way up to Jaisalmer. The Field Club has a palace — donated by the maharaja — unused with respect to its antiquity, and has grounds large enough to accommodate a cricket match.

Having traversed all of Rajasthan, I had ended up saving time for 1 more place to visit. I remembered Lucy Peck, an English architect, who had told me of a ‘state’ at the bottom of Rajasthan, a short journey from Udaipur.

Next morning, I caught a bus from Udaipur to Dungarpur. On reaching there, I was struck by its idyllic location, lying in a valley surrounded by groves; a single hill peaked in the middle with a palace atop.

Rajasthan is a great place to travel not just because it’s dramatically different to the rest of India, but also because people are friendly. I stopped an auto and hired the driver to stay with me for the day, and instantly I had found a friend in him, who then promptly took me to the entry of the palace, Juna Mahal. I was told to get a pass from the office in town.

The ‘office’, as I discovered, was part royal residence, part residential hotel and part office. I stood waiting as music and revelry filtered out of the Royal Residence, which was just a 2-storeyed structure abutting the hotel. A young man arrived to ask if I wanted accommodation in the hotel.

On realising that I was a visitor to the palace above the hill, he wrote on a chit of paper and gave me the ‘pass’. As we got to the palace entry, I looked at the chit which was marked ‘1’. I asked my driver friend if he’d like to join me. Receiving an eager yes, I corrected ‘1’ to ‘2’. I need not have bothered.

A beedi-smoking durban took the chit, barely looking at it, and let us pass. Thus we gained entry to one of the most intriguing of palaces, fully endorsing the description of the architect.

Beautifully appointed with traditional paintings, each part of the palace looked picture-perfect for its allotted use — the durbar, the private audience, the hall of revelry, the zenana, the hawamahal with beautifully carved wood-and-stone screens.

Each of the halls led to hidden balconies, which opened out magnificent views of Dungarpur. Meanwhile, the driver had engaged the durban into an intimate conversation, making him come up and lead us into an exclusive room that had 2 huge closed cupboards. They were opened to reveal in each, covering all sides of the enclosure, the most exotic erotic art I’d ever seen. There cannot be another palace like the Juna Mahal.

We came down to go around town, finally winding up at a wayside halwai with benches. The driver and I shared a beer as he recounted the importance of Dungarpur. The Raja of Dungarpur, famous as a cricket personality, spends most of his time in Mumbai. The whole town knows of his relationship with Lata Mangeshkar, which they respect. She and the raja have helped each other in various charitable projects. It’s no secret. He has said it loud enough for everyone to hear.

That was a few years ago. Bahadur Raj Sing of Dungarpur, known as Raj Bhai, who died in 2009, was the president of  the Board of Control of Cricket in India, and played first-class cricket for 16 years. He is credited with establishing the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru in 2000. That’s not the only connection with Bengaluru. Trishika Kumari, daughter of yuvaraja of Dungarpur Harshvardhan Singh Bahadur (nephew of Raj Bhai), and Mahisri Devi of the royal family of Vizaynagaram, Andhra Pradesh is to marry Yaduveer, anointed the Maharaja of Mysuru, thus establishing a permanent link between a beautiful little town tucked away in the southern corner of Rajasthan, Dungarpur, and the resplendent jewel of a city in Karnataka, Mysuru.