New Delhi, July 29 - The feisty princess Ayesha, daughter of the erstwhile maharaja of Cooch Behar, shot her first panther at the age of 13, stunning everyone. Six years later, the beautiful woman who came to be known as Maharani Gayatri Devi stunned her family again by falling in love with prince Sawai Man Singh of Jaipur.

She called him 'Jai' and insisted on marrying him, never mind that he already had two wives and that her own family was against the match.

Just before the wedding, her brother told her: 'The maharaja likes girls and just because he is marrying you, one must not expect him to give up all his girls.' Gayatri Devi shot back that since he was marrying her, and not the other way round, 'there would be no need for him to have other girls'. All this is now famously recorded in her memoirs for posterity.

Gayatri Devi -- the grand queen mother or 'rajmata' of the Jaipur royal family in Rajasthan who was listed as one of the most beautiful women in the world by Vogue -- remained spirited till the end of her colourful life.

Her death Wednesday -- barely two months after her 90th birthday May 23 -- came after complications caused by an intestinal endoscopy that she underwent two months ago. She died in a Jaipur hospital.

She had one son of her own, who died a few years ago, and three stepchildren.

Gayatri Devi, who was maharani of Jaipur state from 1939 to 1970, was an excellent marksman, a tennis player and a keen rider, with a deep knowledge of horses. She was attached to all her children, fond of flowers like lilies and gladioli and birds.

She spent the last three decades of her life after her husband's death in 1970 at the picturesque Lilypool -- an elegant sprawling bungalow surrounded by greens and a lily pond that she had built with her husband on the premises of Jaipur's Rambagh Palace.

A few years ago, a visit to Lilypool in search of the maharani -- who it turned out was spending her summer abroad -- was a revelation. It was like a simple and warm Bengali home from Cooch Behar peopled by a retinue of servants and staff from her home state, West Bengal. They spoke Bengali and entertained visitors with glasses of chilled water and lemonade even in the mistress' absence.

'Those are the rajmata's orders that nobody goes from here without a glass of water in the maharani's absence.