Qissa Reviews: A Princess, A Spy, A Survivor

In Search of Amrit Kaur opens with the personal story of the author, Livia Manera Sambuy, finding herself in Mumbai for a work assignment in 2007. While sheltering from the sweltering sun, she happens upon a portrait in a museum of Her Royal Highness Rani Shri Amrit Kaur Sahib. What follows is an extensive investigation into the life of this woman, Amrit Kaur, and an exploration of the world around her at the time.

Amrit Kaur was born in 1904 to the fourth wife, Rani Kanari, of Jagatjit Singh Sahib Bahadur, the Maharaja of Kapurthala. If you’re not familiar with Indian history and geography then that basically means the High King of a State in the North West of India, not far from the modern day border with Pakistan. So Amrit is born at the tail end of British colonial rule in India. Her father has money and power, but is also restricted by colonial rule which involved curtailing movement outside of India and other such limitations. We learn early on that Amrit’s mother passed away when Amrit was just six years old, leaving her upbringing to her father’s other wives.  

As Sambuy navigates us through Amrit’s story, we are provided with a fascinating insight into many aspects of Indian culture. Everything from the intricacies of the Sikh religion to details about elaborate wedding ceremonies, via ghost stories and various versions of famous India texts, such as the Ramayana. But our story doesn’t stay in India. Through the book, we are transported to 1930s Europe - Paris in particular - where Amrit lived in her late 20s. Sambuy does an excellent job of capturing the tension of this period in history. Extravagant balls and parties are thrown, but the world is on the brink of war and everyone is wary of the future. Sambuy captures this well by detailing the life of Albert Kahn, a French banker and philanthropist living in Paris, who most likely crossed paths with Amrit. Kahn was Jewish and thus obviously a good conduit for the reader to see the encroaching danger. And Amrit Kaur was in no way immune to this danger…

At times the book feels a little slow. You reach the halfway point and you still don’t feel like you really know much about Amrit as a person. However, the parts that you do spend with Amrit are fascinating. We join her and other women at Besançon, an internment camp in Occupied France during World War II. This section manages to be both horrifying and hilarious. Christmas celebrations with drunken soldiers and startled nuns live alongside details of the horrendous conditions of the camp, from the lack of access to the showers to the freezing temperatures. This part of the book contrasts sharply with the sparkly, glamour-filled excess of previous chapters, where we hear about Indian jewels, fancy-dress parties and international travel. 

Whenever you encounter a book with so much research, it’s imperative that the author is able to balance their own movements and discoveries with the life and movements of their protagonist; in this case Amrit Kaur. Thankfully Sambuy does a great job of this. Much like other fantastic non-fiction writers, such as Patrick Radden-Keefe, Monisha Rajesh and Rachel Hewitt, Sambuy is able to show the reader the historical digging she’s done, without burying us in the research.  

In Search of Amrit Kaur spends a good deal of time diving into the back stories of Amrit's friends and acquaintances and, to be fair, there are certainly some interesting characters featured. There is Nicholas Roerich, a notorious 'spiritual leader' and successful artist. In fact, so successful that more than 1,000 of his paintings were housed in The Roerich Museum in 1928, one of the first museums of contemporary art in New York. Then there is Amrit’s cousin, confusingly also called Amrit Kaur, who was central to the Gandhian nationalist movement and spent three years in prison alongside Gandhi before becoming Health Minister of India. We also learn that Amrit and her husband knew the influential artist Amrita Sher-Gil, perhaps not surprisingly, given the forward-thinking nature of both women and their similar movements between India and Europe.

Another key woman in the book is Bubbles. An enigmatic 80-something year old, Bubbles is the daughter of Amrit Kaur. Abandoned by her mother at a young age, Bubbles was brought up by her father’s second wife. Bubbles provides the stabilising centrepiece for this story. She is what brings the author back to India (after her first trip where she stumbled upon Amrit’s portrait) at the beginning, and she is where we leave the book at the very end. Sambuy spends a lot of time with Bubbles and her affection for her is clear. We also hear from Bubbles' half-siblings and her own children, Amrit’s grandchildren, who are spread across India and the world. This personal element is, I think, very useful in a book in which you don’t share a connection to the subject. While it could of course be written in a purely historical way, having access to a living relative gives such a rich flavour to the story and helps to solidify the events in the book into the context of one lifetime. To some readers, this story might seem a world away from their own, but to others, like Bubbles, this story defines her life. 

There are many fascinating moments in In Search of Amrit Kaur; from a mysterious suitcase found in an attic in America, to a faux-French photography studio in London. With Sambuy we travel the world and the years to find out about the life of Amrit Kaur. I was certainly left with questions when the book came to an end. But I had also discovered a whole new world.