Book Title: The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy
Author(s): Aletta André and Abhimanyu Kumar
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Number of Pages: 352
ISBN: 978-9365693690
Date Published: Feb. 26, 2025
Price: INR 502
Book Excerpt
Part I: Memory
Chapter 1: Malcha Mahal
Pg. 24 – 25
The fridge is one of the objects that stands out during our first visit inside Malcha Mahal, a few months after Ali Raza’s death is reported in the news. It is a Frigidaire, a famous brand of its time, though rusted and broken down from disuse over the years. On the floor are broken plates, clothes beside an empty trunk and papers. There are empty packets of expensive perfumes and flyers of art galleries—probably because Ali Raza was an artist. We find his easel, paint bottles and brushes, caked with disuse, and later learn that he had even received some art lessons at the railway station. In one of the rooms is a dining table, ornate but covered with dust. There are glass plates with designs and motifs laid out on the table. Bats scurry across the rooms, making ululating sounds. The atmosphere is surreal. We feel like we are transgressing a boundary. The air seems to be heavy with years of disappointments and suffering. It is hard to imagine that someone had been living here just some months earlier, let alone had lived there for years. More than three decades of life had been looted and ravaged. Who knows what happened to the carpets, the souvenirs, the paintings and the signboards?
Not all the treasures are gone, though. Among the papers we find clues of who Ali Raza, Sakina and Wilayat were as people. They loved dogs and read magazines in Dutch about how to care for them. They were interested in art and international news. The corresponded with embassies, journalists and academics. They also communicated with the royal family of Udaipur and appear to have been in touch with the royal family of Nepal. Ali Raza had a voter ID card, in the name of Ali Raza Mahal, and his father’s name listed as ‘Raja Hussain’—King Hussain. His age was listed as forty-eight in 2007, which was most likely a bit younger than his real age.
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Also in evidence are piles of business cards and loose pieces of paper with landline numbers and mobile phone numbers written on them. Most of these numbers no longer exist. But after trying a dozen of them without result, something unexpected happens on dialling one number. A man named Mohammad Kasim picks up. And he says he knew the family far more intimately than possibly any other living person: he had been their servant at the New Delhi Railway Station and in Malcha Mahal. It takes months of pursuing Kasim before he agrees to meet us. In the meantime, we decide to visit the prince’s lost kingdom.
Excerpted with permission from The House of Awadh: A Hidden Tragedy by Aletta André and Abhimanyu Kumar published by HarperCollins India.
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