THE RANI VANISHES

ITALIAN JOURNALIST LIVIA MANERA SAMBUY PIECES TOGETHER THE SCINTILLATING TALE OF AMRIT KAUR, THE KAPURTHALA PRINCESS WHO WAS IMPRISONED BY THE GESTAPO

- Manjula Padmanabhan

THE SEARCH FOR AMRIT KAUR An Indian Princess in Wartime Paris

by Livia Manera Sambuy English translation by Todd Portnowitz

CHATTO & WINDUS

On a visit to Mumbai in 2007, the author sees a photograph that will change her life. It’s a monochrome portrait made in 1924, of Rani Amrit Kaur of Mandi, shimmering in her tissue sari and jewels.

The caption claims that the sad-eyed princess of Kapurthala was arrested by the Gestapo in wartime France “on the accusation of having sold her jewellery to help Jews escape the country”. Sent to an internment camp, she “survived less than a year of Nazi imprisonment”.

This tiny scrap of history launches Sambuy, Italian author and journalist, on a 15-year quest to dig up the truth. Red herrings and side stories keep the facts stubbornly out of reach. Eighteen months after seeing the photograph, she travels to Pune to meet the Rani’s daughter, Nirvana Devi of Bilkha, or Bubbles. But the diminutive silver-haired lady exclaims, “I know nothing about my mother!” The Rani left Mandi for Europe in 1933, abandoning her two children and husband, never to return. Bubbles was not yet four. The only thing she knows for sure is that her mother died in 1948 in the UK, not in 1941 in France.