Royal funeral marks end of India's aristocrat era

India mourned Thursday a jet-setting princess who rubbed shoulders with British royalty, her death at the age of 90 severing one of the last links to a bygone era of aristocratic opulence.

The passing of Maharani Gayatri Devi "removes probably the last real queen of India", veteran commentator Amit Roy wrote in a tribute to the internationally renowned beauty from the princely state of Jaipur.

She was born into the nobility and grew up in a palace staffed by 500 servants. She shot her first panther when she was 12 and married into the royal family of Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Devi became internationally famous as a jet-setting beauty, chatting with Queen Elizabeth of Britain at polo games, dancing in nightclubs and presiding over palace life in Jaipur - one of the princely states under British rule.

However, after Indian independence in 1947, she also forged a career as an effective and successful politician, being elected as a member of parliament three times.

She served five months in jail in 1975 on unproven tax charges after clashing with prime minister Indira Gandhi, and later became a determined advocate for female education among India's poor.

Newspapers mourned her death under headlines reading "Desert queen ends colourful journey" and "Gayatri Devi's many-splendoured life", while recalling the extravagances that the country's elite enjoyed in the last century.

The Times of India described how as a four-year-old girl living in London she used to shop on her own at Harrods, and said that she had become used to having a private plane by the age of 21.

She ate caviar while in prison, and was driven around in a monogrammed white Jaguar, the Mail Today recalled, adding that her wedding used to feature in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive of all time. Devi "represented several princely traditions: the beautiful reigning maharani, the global jet-setter and friend of the British royal family, and the powerful political presence," declared the Hindustan Times.

She herself detailed many of her life's excesses in her popular autobiography "A Princess Remembers."

It tells of a childhood surrounded by 100 elephant drivers or "mahouts", 20 gardeners, 20 grooms, a tennis coach and assistant, 12 ball boys, 10 sweepers, and countless other cooks, valets and maids.

Aged just fourteen, she fell in love with the dashing, polo-playing Maharaja of Jaipur and they married - despite her parents' concerns - seven years later.

Becoming his third wife, she lived in even greater luxury but had to obey restrictions imposed on royal women, including periods of purdah - when she was kept secluded from any form of public life. New Delhi, Thursday, AFP