Hues of Holkar

Hedge fund analyst, hotelier, and heritage conservationistmeet Yeshwant Holkar, the torchbearer of the storied Indore royal family.

- PRASAD RAMAMURTHY

MY FIRST MEMORIES of Yuvraj Yeshwant Holkar, of the storied Indore royal family, are from a 2012 impromptu electronic dance-off at his family's 14th-century fortpalace in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh. The crowd included leading members of Mumbai's social set, through whom I was introduced to Yeshwant. Over a decade later, sitting in a courtyard of that very fortpalace, above the Narmada river, I remind him of the evening. "That seems like a different lifetime!" he says with a wide smile. Indeed it does. Today he's married, with two young children. His wife Nyrika leads digital strategy, among other things, at Godrej & Boyce, and is the daughter of Smita Crishna Godrej who owns a significant share of the Godrej empire. But more importantly, Yeshwant has come into his own as the affable, yet slightly restrained custodian of a legacy that plays an important role in Central India's sociopolitical consciousness. (I consider it a metaphor of the change that even the basement where we partied has been converted into a button mushroom farm.)