Javier Moro’s novel about the Spanish flamenco dancer who married the maharaja of Kapurthala in Punjab, Pasión India, was released in India in an English translation Aug. 8. The story sounds fantastic, from the time that she and Raja Jagatjit Singh Bahadur met cute:

Marrakech comes to Punjab

Anita [Delgado]… drank the hot water in the finger bowl the first time the Maharaja entertained her in the costliest restaurant at Madrid… [she was] re-christened Prem Kaur… [Link]

… Rani Amrit Kaur Sahib [was] the only daughter of Maharaja Sir Jagatjit Singh Bahadur of Kapurthala, by his third wife, Rani Prem Kaur, alias Anita Delgado, a ”Flamenco dancer’ and dancing associate of Mata Hari, the spy. This surprising match and the ensuing wedding festivities in Spain gave rise to an expression still used to describe those seen [as] climbing the social ladder — ‘as if they are getting married to a maharaja.’ [Link]

To their falling out amidst his philandering and her scandalous affair with her stepson:

… rumours reached her that [her husband] was often seen in the company of a white woman… she began to spend time with Kamal, her stepson… who was of her age… the world came to know about what a Parisian journal described as an “Indo-Spanish Phaedra,” alluding to the famous Greek tragedy in which the king’s wife falls in love with one of his sons. [Link]

Her savior was none other than the Quaid-e-Azam:

Jagatjit Singh would have summarily packed her off to Málaga but for the intervention of his friend Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was staying at the same hotel where the lovers were caught almost red-handed… [Link]

The king continued chasing skirts:

… he had brought a French girl, Arlette Serry, as his companion and as a final insult to her. When after sucking him dry, Arlette joined her secret lover, he married again, this time to a Czech theatre actress, who preferred to jump down from the top of Qutab Minar holding tightly to her chest her two poodles, rather than spend the rest of her life with a doddering old man. [Link]

But cigar or no cigar, he was considered a Clintonian ruler:

… he built a large mosque, modelled after the Qutbia Mosque in Marakesh, Morocco [for his Muslim subjects]… He not only built a mini Paris in Kapurthala, but also gave the city a modern sewage and water system and telephones way back in 1901. He was a pioneer in promoting compulsory primary education for both boys and girls. [Link]

The king had their marriage annulled, and Delgado eventually returned to Spain:

Maharani Prem Kaur [née Anita Delgado], born Malaga, Spain, died 7th July 1962, married 6thly, 1942… [Link]

Penélope Cruz is reportedly due to scout locations around Delhi and Kapurthala in January and will be finalizing local casting then. She’s playing the star-crossed dancing girl:

Javier Moro, who is actually author Dominique Lapierre’s nephew… wrote the novel in Spanish. It soon became a bestseller, having sold 500,000 copies in Europe alone. [Link]

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