'Her Name Was Brought Up When We Discussed Chanel...': The Tragic Tale Behind A Broken Grave In Delhi

National National

Posted by AI on 2025-07-01 14:52:42 | Last Updated by AI on 2025-07-01 15:24:39

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Who was Mirabelle Alfa? A Parisian cabaret dancer whose name would be brought up in the same breath as Chanel became a Kapurthala royal after marrying Prince Paramjit Singh, but her final years saw her far from her past splendor, dying alone in a Delhi hospital in 1984.

It is a brisk December afternoon in Delhi, and right outside the gates of the iconic Lodhi Cremation Ground, stands a broken grave. A forlorn monument to a life that started in glamour and ended in solitude. The sparse plantings around the grave and the chipping inscriptions on the headstone speak to a story that has been largely forgotten by those who remember it at all.

The life of Mirabelle Alfa, a Frenchwoman who danced in a cabaret in Paris before becoming a Kapurthala royal after marrying Prince Paramjit Singh, is a tragic tale of what might have been. She died alone, far from her past splendor, in a Delhi hospital in 1984.

Alfa's grave, which has been broken into pieces and is slowly being swallowed by the undergrowth, stands as a reminder of a life cut short and the loneliness of it all. It is a stark contrast to the grandeur of the Kapurthala dynasty, of whom Alfa became a part through marriage.

And in the silence, as the winter breeze whispers through the trees, it forces you to consider the loneliness of Alfa's existence, a woman forgotten by the world and now even by those closest to her.

In the end, all that is left is a broken grave in a lonely corner of a cemetery, a testament to a life lived in the spotlight and then extinguished in darkness.

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