[This is an exclusive excerpt from award-winning journalist and author John Zubzycki’s House of Jaipur – The Inside Story of India’s Most Glamorous Royal Family (Juggernaut, 2020). He is the best-selling author of The Last Nizam: An Indian Prince in the Australian Outback and The Mysterious Mr Jacob: Diamond Merchant, Magician and Spy.]
In 1919, Indira and Jit [Gayatri Devi’s parents, the maharaja and maharani of Cooch Behar] had attended a Masonic banquet at one of London’s most prestigious dining venues, the Princes’ Restaurant in Piccadilly, to honour the contribution of Indian soldiers in World War I.
The guest list included Khusru Jung, the dashing twenty-seven-year-old son of the commander-in-chief of the Hyderabad army, Afsar-ul-Mulk. Jung was a cavalry lieutenant, a brilliant polo player and married to the daughter of a Hyderabadi nobleman with whom he had a daughter.
Tall and dignified with a carefully manicured moustache, somewhere between a pencil and a toothbrush style, high cheekbones and a receding hairline, he was also the private secretary of the crown prince of Kashmir, Hari Singh.