When Gaj Singh II, head of the Rathore clan of Marwar - Jodhpur to you and me - came back from England in the 1970s, it was to a near-penurious existence, which might be laughable if he didn’t own properties worth thousands of crores even then, including the world’s largest residence, Umaid Bhawan, which ironically had been commissioned by his grandfather as a famine relief project and had taken 16 years to build as a rival to the viceregal palace in New Delhi.

Bapji, as he is fondly called, recalls the family grocer’s reluctance to extend further credit till his previous accounts were cleared.

Apocryphal? Probably not, considering the royal family had a staff of hundreds who needed to be fed and kept healthy.

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