Passion India by Javier Moro

A few weeks after I came back from India, Alejandra lent me a book that in her opinion was a good story with a cheesy title: Pasión India (Indian passion).

I just read it, and I loved it!.

Pasion India by Javier Moro is about the life of Anita Delgado, a Spanish dancer coming from a humble family that becomes the fifth wife of the maharaja of Kapurthala in India in the early 1900s.

In 1906 Jagatjit Singh, the maharaja of Kapurthala, comes to Madrid to the wedding of the king Alfonso XIII and by chance meets Anita, a Spanish dancer.

He falls in love with her and soon convinces her family of his good intentions. Before taking her to India, he finds a mentor to take care of her education in France. Anita lives in Paris for some time where she learns what she needs to become a maharani: etiquette, French and English, horse riding and tennis (what a good life!)

A year later she travels to India with mix feelings of excitement and fear for her new life and the new world she is about to discover.

Anita lives in an India ruled by the maharajas under the British Empire for over 18 years.

The story very well tells about the eccentricities of the maharajas, their wealth and their wonderful lifestyle, the rural India, the loyalty of the Indians towards the British…

I suppose this story is quite novelized, but still, despite of the difficulties, I was amazed to read how well Anita adapted to such a different culture and lifestyle. It seems she was not only beautiful and charming, but also very intelligent.

Unfortunately the love story ends, (such a pity, I really liked the Indian-Spanish combination…), but I will not spoil the ending…

Soon after I read the book, I searched in Google looking for pics and facts about Kapurthala, and I found that our Penelope Cruz is traveling there next January to start shooting the movie ‘Pasion India’. It seems that the family of Jagatjit Singh and the other maharajas are not happy about the plan of taking this story to the cinema. They say that this is not the true story.

Well, I think Jagatjit Singh is described as a cultivated and generous man, very open minded for his time and much loved by his people. According to the author, thanks to Jagatjit, Kapurthala became an example of a cosmopolitan, multicultural and multireligious state.

I really enjoyed this book; it is not a Gabriel Garcia Marquez kind of writing, but in my opinion the story is very interesting and entertaining.

Here goes the link of a review of this book I found by Tribune India:

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2006/20060820/spectrum/book1.htm