The congregation outside the Church of St Michael & All Angels after the service in memory of Gayatri Devi.

London, June 27: A moving and affectionate service of thanksgiving for the Rajmata of Jaipur was held at the picturesque Church of St Michael & All Angels, Sunninghill, Berkshire, yesterday.

Family and friends from India and Britain remembered the erstwhile Maharani, who was ailing in a hospital in London last year but insisted she be flown back by air ambulance to Jaipur where she died nine days later on July 29 at the age of 90.

Many of her English friends who paid tribute to her yesterday had shared the Rajmata’s passion for polo — indeed the church service was followed by a game, sponsored by the Ganjam jewellery company, at the nearby Guards Polo Club in Windsor Great Park where she had spent many happy afternoons throughout her life.

The Maharani was the third wife from 1939 to 1970 of Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II (“Jai”) of Jaipur. He was 58 when he died shortly after collapsing during a polo match in Cirencester in England in 1970. The couple’s son, Jagat, passed away in 1997.

The Queen and Prince Philip, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Michael of Kent, all sent their representatives yesterday.

 

Gayatri Devi.

Other polo connected people in church included Lord Cowdray, whose father had been “a great friend” of the Jaipur royal family.

The mood of the service, full of fond memories, a little humour and anecdotes of a life well lived, was summed up by a friend, Michael Butler, a champion polo player, who read: “You can shed tears that she is gone, or you can smile because she has lived.”

One of the highlights was a passage from the Gayatri Mantra, “raising awareness and dispelling the darkness”, that was sung with a remarkable command of Sanskrit by Chloe Goodchild, an Englishwoman. The Jaipur family was led by the Rajmata’s second stepson, Maharaj Jai Singh (“Joey”), who read a passage from the Bhagvad Gita.

He explained “doctors had been doubtful about my mother coming to England last year (because of her poor health) but she said she had been coming to London every year since the age of 16 except for the war years. She wanted to see her friends for the last time.”

The order of service was carefully arranged to be non-denominational by another polo playing friend, Lord Patrick Beresford, a former Guards officer and a long time senior member of the Guard’s Polo Club.

He said Gayatri Devi was known in her circle in England always as “Ayesha” — as in Ayesha, the Return of She, the gothic novel by the Victorian author H. Rider Haggard, published in 1905.

The church rippled with laughter as he said the character in the novel was not unlike the Maharani — “She Who Must Be Obeyed”.

In his address, Lord Patrick (as he is called), recounted a number of complicated anecdotes where the dramatic personae included an Englishman who was known by his nickname of what sounded like “Loopy”. Any moment it seemed further cast members such Bertie Wooster, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Roderick Glossop, Pongo Twistleton and assorted regulars of the Drones Club would all stagger in.

Maharaj Jai Singh, the late Rajmata’s second stepson, who read a passage from the Bhagvad Gita, during the service

In the clash between the Rajmata and Indira Gandhi, Lord Patrick left no doubt which side he was on. Mrs Gandhi, who had locked up Ayesha during the emergency in a stinking hole with a drain running through her cell, was “mercifully swept out of power” and the new government dismissed all the trumped up charges against the Maharani. (Lord Patrick, the Rajmata’s friend for 58 years, forgot to mention that not long afterwards Mrs Gandhi got swept back into power).

For an outwardly bluff British soldier, Lord Patrick’s choice of music was exceptionally sensitive — Ayesha would have approved (though, this being Wimbledon fortnight, the Rajmata, given the choice of going to tennis or attending her own thanksgiving service, would almost certainly have “chucked” the church service, Lord Patrick laughed).

Music before the service included The Flower Song from Carmen by Bizet, and the Waltz and the Dance of the Swans from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.

After the enchanting entrance hymn, Morning Has Broken, there were readings from the Corinthians, Chapter 13, by Mark Shand, the Duchess of Cornwall’s brother who shared an interest in elephant welfare with the Rajmata, and by Pamela, Dowager Lady Egremont, another of her friends.

The printed order of service used two photographs of the Rajmata from her younger days when she was hailed by Vogue as one of the most beautiful women in the world.

The caption read: “From this whole world, the loveliest and the best has smiled and said goodbye.”

The congregation filed out to bright sunshine on an English summer’s day to three of the Maharani’s choices when she had appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs, in 1984 — Moon River, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and My Way.