In this gritty Indian city, a crumbling palace and a few church graves whisper the curious history of Muslim queens who allied with scions of a French royal family.
It is a tale that Balthazar-Napoleon Bourbon, a portly lawyer and part-time farmer whose family traces its lineage back to the Bourbons who began ruling France in the 16th century, knows well.
"As soon as I could have consciousness -- when I was six or seven years of age -- it [my royal heritage] was instilled in me," says Bourbon at his house next to a church founded by his great-grandmother, Isabella.
PHOTO: AFP
The doorway to the house is emblazoned with a brass sign -- "House of Bourbon" -- and the fleur-de-lis, the heraldic crest bearing a lily that has been associated with the French monarchy for centuries. In the church, stones engraved with the Bourbon name mark the graves of Isabella and her children.
The Bourbon dynasty ruled France from 1589 until the bloody 1789 French Revolution.
"We regularly had guests coming from Europe, so time and again the [family] history used to be repeated," Bourbon says.
And what a history it is -- even if some details are murky.
According to family accounts, a man named Jean-Philippe de Bourbon Navarre arrived in 1560 at the court of Emperor Akbar, the third king of the Mughal dynasty, which ruled from the early 16th century until the mid 19th century.
"The young adventurer was tall, his bearing gallant," said the writer C.A. Kincaid, in a 1946 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India.
The 16th-century was a time in India's history when "there were plenty of Europeans of all nationalities roaming about ... trying to make their fortunes in one way or another," notes English history lecturer Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, who has written about the Bourbons.
The family accounts say Jean-Philippe, the hot-blooded son of a duke who was a cousin of King Henry IV, had fled France after killing another French nobleman in a duel.
He ended up in Goa on India's southwestern coast after being kidnapped by pirates and escaping their clutches. From there, he made his way to the royal court where he ingratiated himself swiftly.
In the 18th century, descendants of the family moved to the princely realm of Bhopal, now capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
Louis Rousselet, in India and its Native Princes, first published in French in 1875, describes a visit to the poisoned Balthazar's wife Elizabeth.
"I was at once struck by her type, which is evidently European," wrote Rousselet who was "received by a number of armed domestics, who, after having assisted us to dismount from our elephant, conducted us to a large salon."
With the abolition of royal titles and privileges in 1971 in India, the Bourbons lost their royal patrons -- but retain their memories of grander times.
"The jagirs [lands] which the Bourbons had were confiscated. Then the Bourbons took up jobs. Prior to my father nobody did," says Bourbon, who bears no resentment over their change in circumstances and often jokes that he and his family are "Bourbons on the rocks."
The descendants of the Begums, meanwhile, have become royalty in other walks of life in modern India and Pakistan.
The family counts former captain of the Indian cricket team, the Nawab of Pataudi Mansur Ali Khan, and his son, Bollywood superstar Saif Ali Khan, along with former Pakistani foreign secretary Shaharyar Khan among its luminaries.
For the Bourbons now, their name and Roman Catholic faith are the family's only legacies of their French past. Bourbon does not speak French, though his children are learning the language.
"I'm totally Indian, I have to live in this country, I was born here, I was bred here and I have to suit my place," says Bourbon. "I have to earn my bread, I can't rest on my fortunes, which anyway are gone."
In November, Bourbon finally met a relative from a European branch of the family, Prince Michael of Greece, who lives in France.
"Daddy was just delighted," says daughter Michelle, 16, recalling the visit. "It was the first time he met another Bourbon."
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and