Delhi of the early seventies. A woman appears, almost out of nowhere, and declares herself to be a queen – Begum of Awadh to be more specific.
She comes with an entourage of servants, around 15 hounds and her two children - Princess Sakina and Prince Cyrus. What she is looking for is a palace befitting of a royal family.
It takes her around eight years to get the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, to accept her claim. That she had been wronged. That she deserved the dignity of a royal.
And a palace she is given finally not exactly what she had in mind but this would have to be it — Malcha Mahal.
If the name suggest any sense of grandeur, the place is devoid of it. Because well, Malcha Mahal is not exactly a palace but a 14th Century hunting lodge made of stone tucked away in the middle of a jungle in central Delhi. Over the next handful of decades, the mystery that the Begum brought with her would pique everybody's interests.
They were a lonesome lot, living in the middle of civilization yet so far away from it. They shooed away visitors, rarely appeared in public like the other erstwhile royals. They'd continue to live in Malcha Mahal uncared for, unkempt, in abject poverty like ghosts, unable to come to terms with the present till the last of them Prince Cyrus would pass away in 2017. And then comes an interesting twist. These royal descendants of Awadh were not royals after all.
There was an inkling that something was amiss about the whole charade of royalty- but what exactly was it? That was story that journalists here were trying to crack for decades unsuccessfully until very recently when the mystery was disentangled by Ellen Barry a journalist for New York Times.
Tune in to this podcast where journalists recount their visits to Malcha Mahal and their encounters with the recluse prince.
In Photos: The ‘Danse Macabre’ in Malcha Mahal
Editor and Host: Shorbori Purkayastha
Guests: Jaskirat Singh Bawa, Senior Editor, The Quint
Rupinder Kaur, Former Journalist
Producer: Shelly Walia
Music: Big Bang Fuzz
She comes with an entourage of servants, around 15 hounds and her two children - Princess Sakina and Prince Cyrus. What she is looking for is a palace befitting of a royal family.
It takes her around eight years to get the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, to accept her claim. That she had been wronged. That she deserved the dignity of a royal.
And a palace she is given finally not exactly what she had in mind but this would have to be it — Malcha Mahal.
If the name suggest any sense of grandeur, the place is devoid of it. Because well, Malcha Mahal is not exactly a palace but a 14th Century hunting lodge made of stone tucked away in the middle of a jungle in central Delhi. Over the next handful of decades, the mystery that the Begum brought with her would pique everybody's interests.
They were a lonesome lot, living in the middle of civilization yet so far away from it. They shooed away visitors, rarely appeared in public like the other erstwhile royals. They'd continue to live in Malcha Mahal uncared for, unkempt, in abject poverty like ghosts, unable to come to terms with the present till the last of them Prince Cyrus would pass away in 2017. And then comes an interesting twist. These royal descendants of Awadh were not royals after all.
There was an inkling that something was amiss about the whole charade of royalty- but what exactly was it? That was story that journalists here were trying to crack for decades unsuccessfully until very recently when the mystery was disentangled by Ellen Barry a journalist for New York Times.
Tune in to this podcast where journalists recount their visits to Malcha Mahal and their encounters with the recluse prince.
In Photos: The ‘Danse Macabre’ in Malcha Mahal
Editor and Host: Shorbori Purkayastha
Guests: Jaskirat Singh Bawa, Senior Editor, The Quint
Rupinder Kaur, Former Journalist
Producer: Shelly Walia
Music: Big Bang Fuzz
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