RAJA Purna Chandra Deo Bhanj, the royal ruler of the erstwhile Daspalla state in the East of India, now lives in solitary splendour in Visakhapatnam. In the heart of the city, in a crowded and bustling area called Surya Bagh, he has a split-level rambling palace of Dutch architecture that has a ballroom dance floor and is 250 years old. The Raja thinks it must be among the oldest buildings in Vizag, if not the oldest. It is called Surya Bagh Palace, and either the palace is named after the area it is located in, or Surya Bagh got its name from the palace. I don�t think he knows the story, either.

The Raja told me the palace belonged to his wife�s ancestors. He said, �They are the oldest family in Visakhapatnam, she is a Telugu girl, the daughter of the Raja of Chemudu, in Andhra Pradesh�s Vijayanagram district.� I regret, I did not meet his wife the afternoon I spent at Surya Bagh Palace with him, sipping a lime juice cordial laced with ginger and listening to stories that were in black and white and sepia tone... but colourfully told.

He himself is from Daspalla, which now comes in Orissa, a 100 kilometres to the west of Bhubaneshwar. �It was one of the eastern state agencies before they merged in 1947 to form Greater Orissa,� the Raja explained. Daspalla was 1,000 square kilometres big and it had a royal family that ruled it all the while. He is the 18th in the line, and he ascended the throne, so to say, in 1965 when his father passed away.

�Dr. Rajendra Prasad recognised me as the next Raja and I got the privy purse,� he explained. �At that time Daspalla, because of its proximity to Puri, had some connection with the Shri Jagannath Temple there. Now Daspalla is a tehsil,� the Raja said.

He is, at 72, a sprightly fellow, despite the right arm being broken and in a sling. Also, he is a handsome man, tall and regal in his bearing, full of charm and old-world courtesy and manners. And he shuffles around the split-levels of his palace with amazing agility, supported by only a walking stick. He thrust the broken arm out at me apologetically when we met, �I�m sorry to meet you like this, like a wounded soldier, but I took a toss just the other day and my physiotherapy sessions are still on.�

I came across him by accident. Spotting the impressive gates of his palace, with the Orissa lion sitting on guard outside, I made inquiries, learnt about the Raja, and was soon ushered into his presence. He is truly a Raja in retirement. �For the last 12 and half years my life has been at a standstill,� he said to me gently. At a standstill it might be, but the Raja is certainly not inactive. He subscribes to and reads 27 magazines, involves himself in the family business with his son, which is the management of a hotel, a cinema house, a shopping complex in Vizag, and a teak business in Daspalla. And he is the president of the Ramakrishna Mission in Vizag. �I have retired into spiritualism,� he said to me solemnly. �I am a great follower of Rama Krishna.�

Raja P. C. Deo Bhanj left Daspalla in 1948 to do Senior Cambridge at the Rajkumar College in Raipur, which is where most of the princes of the erstwhile royal states of India studied. And then he went on to do a Bachelor of Arts degree at the A. V. N. College in Vizag.

He got married in 1949, his wife�s family was closely associated with the Dutch, who ran the East India Company before the English took over. They had three children, two girls and a boy. The boy, who is now a man, is in the family business with the Raja, the daughters married and settled elsewhere. The elder daughter married Raja Kishore Chandra Deo, an Andhra zamindar and former union minister. The second daughter married Thakur Mahipal Singh of Vadner in Nashik, Malegaon taluka, who is a hotelier with the Taj Group. The son stays with the Raja in Vizag.

The Raja is a content man, and I think his going into spiritualism has got much to do with this. He�s led his life and continues to lead it, which included a stint in parliament when Nehru was prime minister, and also one in the Orissa assembly. He talked politics. �Nehru, who was fond of my father, dragged me into the Congress. This was the third Lok Sabha. I became an MP in 1962 and was one till 1967. I saw four prime ministers. Nehru, Shastri, Gulzarilal Nanda and Indira. And we were a jovial lot in parliament, I can tell you. The humour has now vanished from the Lok Sabha with us old parliamentarians. Society will suffer because of it. Now leaders pay and come in! And what kind of netas do we have! They rush the well of the house during debates, I see it happening all the time on TV. In my time we never entered this area.� But he has had it with politics now. �I�ve washed my hands off it completely,� he said.

And he talked about Daspalla, his beloved Daspalla, where he is still recognised as the Raja (why should he not be, I thought), and where he has forests of teak wood trees in an area called Satkosya Gonda through which the Mahanadi passes, and where wild elephants often rampage in summer months. Daspalla was part of his constituency when he was an MLA in Orissa. And he maintains a palace there still, the Daspalla Palace, which was forcibly made a college for 18 years and then vacated again! There was a certain royal lifestyle as long as he continued to remain in Daspalla. Small banquets were regularly thrown by his father, who was a good host, for the benefits of the Governors of Orissa. And these banquets used to be catered by the Grand Hotel in Calcutta.

He belongs to the Bhanj dynasty of Orissa. �See the peacock on our coat of arms,� he said presenting it to me rather proudly. �I saw to it that the peacock was made the national bird when I was an MP.�

That�s when I asked, whether he had tasted the peacock which used to be a prized meat in game food that royal families used to go out on shikars for. The Raja answered without batting an eye. �No, but I�ve always been careful about the food I eat. Earlier, my diet used to be Oriya food.

Now I am a vegetarian two days of the week for religious purposes. Otherwise my tastes are cosmopolitan. My cooks are Oriya but they do Andhra food just the same. I have something Continental for dinner. There is no royal lifestyle or anything like that which I follow. I drink the occasional glass of whisky, or a beer. And till recently, I was smoking 60 Dunhills a day. It was the anxiety of having to succeed my father that led me to smoking. And drinking I took to when I was in Delhi and attending one embassy party after another.�