The charismatic Gayatri Devi, former rajmata of Jaipur, would send a box of Alphonso mangoes from India for the Duke of Edinburgh’s birthday every year, says a new book.

According to a PTI report, she and her husband were great friends with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.

Australian author John Zubrzycki describes the history of the royal house, with stories of glamour, jewels, scandals and opulence in his new book ‘The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India’s Most Glamorous Royal Family’. 

The author said, “Gayatri Devi and husband Man Singh II, the last ruling Maharaja of the erstwhile Jaipur State – Ayesha and Jai as they were known to their friends – are central to the story of Jaipur over the past century.”

“In the 1950s and 1960s, Jai and Ayesha were India’s golden couple. They were the only Indians invited to Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball in 1966 at New York’s Plaza Hotel,” he writes in the book.

“Ayesha was the only woman who was allowed to break the dress code, arriving in a gold sari and a necklace of emeralds. Frank Sinatra, Rose Kennedy and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were there too. All were friends of the Jaipurs,” he says about that masquerade ball.

The book describes what life is really like inside the royal palace. It also reveals the poignant drama of how India’s princely families came to terms with democracy and change.

In the book, Zubrzycki mentions about Ayub Khan, a close confidant of Gayatri Devi.

“Khan used to earn a few rupees a day as Gayatri Devi’s ballboy on Lily Pool’s now abandoned tennis courts. After he completed his college degree, she offered him a job as a typist and bought him a trusty Godrej manual typewriter,” he writes.

“‘Every year she would send Prince Philip a box of Alphonso mangoes for his birthday,” Zubrzycki quotes Khan as telling him.

Khan regularly met the British royal at polo matches in England.

Ayesha was unique among Indian maharanis, breaking the stereotype of Indian princesses demurely hidden behind their veils, he says.

Zubrzycki says it’s a little over a decade since Gayatri Devi died, but such was her stature it could have been a few weeks ago.