Reclusive 'royals': Unravelling the mystery of Begum Wilayat Mahal

NEW DELHI: One day, in 1975, the first-class waiting room of the New Delhi Railway Station became home to a woman, her three children, a posse of servants, a pack of dogs - and curious reporters, photographers and onlookers showed up with questions.

- Jasjeev Gandhiok

RV Smith, the raconteur of Delhi, who had died in 2020, had summed it up best, "I remember that in the late 1970s, a strange sight greeted us at New Delhi Railway Station - a gaunt middle-aged woman standing at platform No. 1 arms akimbo. Trains came and went but she continued to stay unperturbed by the sick hurry of life."

The woman was Begum Wilayat Mahal, who claimed to be the descendant of Nawab Wajid Ali of Awadh and had squatted at the railway station for almost a decade before the government gave her a "palace" in Delhi in place of the ancestral properties seized by the British in 1856.

The "palace" was Malcha Mahal, a Tughlaq-era hunting lodge, a kilometre inside from Sardar Patel Marg, found after following a narrow, dirt trail which winds its way through countless monkeys, golden jackals and a thicket of vilayati kikar.

The dilapidated monument was home to Wilayat, her daughter princess Sakina Raza, and prince Ali Raza (Cyrus). The family lived an extremely secluded life, occasionally speaking to foreign correspondents.

The pieces that came out of these interactions only added to the air of mystery around them, describing servants carrying handwritten notes on silver platters and chained dogs that scared away visitors.

The story of the reclusive "royals" continues to capture both national and international attention, with claims of their ancestry being under scanner for decades.

Now, authors Aletta André and Abhimanyu Kumar, based in The Netherlands, have attempted to decode this mystery with their book The House of Awadh (Harper Collins, ₹599) released on February 26.