Tale of a timeless princess
Princess Niloufer
Niloufer
Farhat Begum Sahiba was one of the last princesses of the Ottoman
Empire. She was married to the second son of the last Nizam of Hyderabad
in India. Wikipedia
Born: January 4, 1916, Istanbul, Turkey
Died: June 12, 1989, Paris, France
Spouse: Edward Julius Pope (m. 1963), Moazzam Jah (m. 1931–1952)
As she turned 100 on a warm January morning, on Monday , tales of her timeless beauty leapt right back into the memories of Hyderabad's old-timers. And ories of Hyderabad's old-timers. And rightly so, for Princess Niloufer was nothing short of a marvellous sight to behold. Not a single `most-beautifulwomen-in-the-world' list of that era was complete without the name of the Turkish Princess.
Azam Jah
-first son of Nizam
Double wedding of two sons of the Nizam Hydebarad of India Azam Jah,m prince of Berar with princess Durru Shevar of the Ottoman empire (left) and Prince Moazzam Jah with Princess Niloufer
Thus began Niloufer's Hyderabad journey with a husband and a father.She had lost hers when she was four.A string of letters exchanged between the two and now safely preserved at the Chowmahalla Palace archives stands testimony to the closeness that Niloufer shared with the Nizam. Ironically , her marriage was a debacle. In one such letter, Niloufer is found telling him how she hopes to find the love of a father in him. In another, she's found confiding in the Nizam about her struggles with the English language. "I do not know much English. But I am learning quickly ," the letter, written el egantly in ink, reads.
The Nizam's responses put her con cerns to rest. In fact, as the letters sug gest, he even arranged for Niloufer's mother, Adile Sultana, to travel to Hy derabad with the newly-weds. Perhaps he knew well just how much the young bride loved her mother. "Niloufer's mother can also accompany them...wil arrange return passage end of January prior to my departure to Delhi in Febru ary next..." reads a part of a letter sent from the kingdom here.
"Niloufer was also allowed to cal him papa within the confines of the house. Others had to address him as Your Excellency , or some such title That only proves that he was extremely affectionate towards her," says New York-based management consultant Arvind Acharya, who has in his pos session reams of private documents and photographs of the Princess. It was given to him by Evelyn Pope, the second wife of Niloufer's second husband, Ed ward Julius Pope.
Also, post the police action in 1948 Osman Ali Khan, among many other trusts, created a Princess Niloufer Trust so that she didn't have to struggle to fend for herself, Acharya shares.
While there isn't any living source to confirm on what note this relationship finally ended when Niloufer divorced Jah in 1952 and left Hyderabad for good, some say the Princess was bitterly upset about parting from her father-in-law.
Acclaimed author and historian William Dalrymple claims otherwise.His research, the writer says, "points to nothing like that". "She was a close riend of my grandmothers. And from what I have heard, she was miserable during her last days in the city . Her husband had passed on a very "unpleasant" illness to her and the family wasn't particularly nice either," Dalrymple says, unable to stop regretting his lost chance to meet the Princess in person a few years before she died in 1989. "I had received an invitation to meet her in Paris. Unfortunately , it couldn't materialise," he adds. But this daughter-father-in-law equation was only a part of Niloufer's exceedingly dramatic life. There were several other chapters -the tragedy around the disastrous relationship with her husband, the unexplainable grief of being unable to bear a child, the brave move to train to be a nurse during World War II and subsequently going on to start a hospital for women and children in Hyderabad, and eventually taking a tough decision to run from her miseries in the city.
"That's what is enthralling about Niloufer's story . The tale of a beautiful princess, struck by poverty at an early age, who married the son of the richest man in the world only to realize that money can't buy happiness, is exciting and gripping. So is her vulnerability - she was a victim of circumstances," says Acharya.
And that she did a lot of good for Hyderabad and its people is tough to forget, points out city old-timer Laxmi Devi Raj. "Niloufer was involved in various social works. She worked tirelessly for women. She also uplifted indigenous forms of artwork," she adds.
Princess Nilofuer
wife of Prince Moazzam Jah Bahadur the Second Son of Nizam Seventh.
Yet it
isn't just her porcelain skin and striking features that continue to
draw history enthusiasts to Niloufer's story. It's the many dramatic
phases of her life. A life that was `born' in Istanbul, took roots in
France, had a brief but tumultuous stopover at Hyderabad and eventually
culminated in Paris
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.
There's another endearing sub-plot in her narrative. The relationship that the Princess shared with her father- in-law, Mir Osman Ali Khan - the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. Cousin to Princess Durrushevar (daughter of the last caliph of the Ottoman dynasty), Niloufer's hand was given in marriage to the Nizam's younger son, Moazzam Jah, keeping with a special `pact' signed between the two rulers. Durrushevar married the older sibling, Azam Jah.The November 12, 1931 wedding was an opulent event at Nice.
The setting is the opulently restored Jade Room of the Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad where the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad once greeted the royals, aristocrats and commoners who trooped in to parley or pay homage to India's only 21-gun royal. The Falaknuma Palace has now been restored to its former splendour by the Taj Group aided by Princess Esra who ensured they didn't deviate from the original or cut corners during the mammoth restoration job that stretched on for over five years. "My role in all this has been to fuss and criticise," says Princess Esra, with perhaps more than a trace of modesty.
Today, Mukarram, who's around 80, and who has five marriages behind him, has moved to Turkey, the land where his mother and his first wife Esra came from. Mukarram has an extremely distinguished lineage on his mother's side and is the grandson of the last Ottoman caliph, who was deposed after World War I. "He's very healthy, but isn't very mobile because of diabetes-related complications," says Azmet.
Princess Esra tells the story of the Maharaja of Baroda who divorced his wife and later called her back to help with family problems. "I was young. I thought what a fool. How could she go back? And 30 years later I found myself doing the same thing. Now I feel it was destiny. It was meant of me," says Esra.
In 1996, Mukarram turned to his first wife — and almost certainly the most intelligent of them all — and asked her to return to Hyderabad to sort out what was left of the family's property there. Says Esra: "He asked me to take on the problems, to take on whatever renovations could be made. I didn't want to. I was terrified. I didn't want to break the trust."
Esra had been away from Hyderabad for over 20 years after her divorce and the city she returned to was not the same languid-paced small city. She says: "I lived here for 16 years when I was married. I didn't come back for 20 years. But I had kept up my friendships."
After her divorce in the mid-1970s, Esra left the city and her children who were in school in England, also found themselves banished. Says Azmet: "We were told we could never come back to India and Hyderabad, so we switched to being Turkish and British."
The family rift lasted almost 20 years till 1994 when Mukarram, after many years in Australia, broke his silence and called his son. And, what was it like to be reunited after 20 years? "It was very emotional," says Azmet in a matter-of-fact tone.
Cut to 2014 and the entire family — including Prince Alexander Azam Jah, Mukarram's son by his second wife Helen — return regularly to Hyderabad. Azam's mother Helen died in the late 1980s and her second son Umar also died some years ago after a drug overdose. Azam is very close to Esra and his step-brother and step-sister and told one newspaper: "After my brother passed away, she took me under her wing and stood by me like a rock. I love Princess Esra with all my heart. She has been a mother to me when she needn't have been."
Mukarram's third wife Manolya and her daughter Niloufer also live in Hyderabad, but she's estranged from her ex-husband and his other families and has filed a suit for property she says was promised to her daughter.
Azmet, who trained as a cameraman — and who has worked with Steven Spielberg and on movies like Basic Instinct — has thrown himself into Hyderabadi life in a different way. He has almost completed a movie on his great-grandfather Osman Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam who's remembered for being on Time magazine's cover in 1938 as the richest man in the world — and also for being miserly on a heroic scale. Originally, Azmet had got leading broadcast celebrity Sir David Frost interested in the project, but Frost died before he could start work on it. Currently, a director from the BBC is making the film, which will be taken on the global festival circuit.
Azmet's hoping the world will look upon his great-grandfather in a different light after seeing his movie. "My great-grandfather is perceived as a miser. I want to dispel that myth. He has been very wrongly represented. He did a lot for Hyderabad."
Whether the seventh Nizam was the world's richest man or not, a large chunk of his legacy has vanished over the last 35 years. But in the last decade Esra, with the help of lawyer Vijay Shankardass, has straightened out the former Nizam's financial affairs to a considerable extent and reached settlements with many people who had made claims on the estate. Bear in mind that the seventh Nizam is said to have fathered 149 children or more, so the complexity of the legal tangles were immense.
And Falaknuma, which had been locked for many decades, has been renovated and given on a 30-year lease to the Taj Group. Says Esra: "We worked on every detail. We had to do things like the lighting and the air-conditioning without ruining the place. I worked with them like a worker shifting furniture and everything."
Simultaneously, the Chowmahalla Palace in the city was also renovated with the help of Intach founder Martand Singh and architect Rahul Mehrotra. Some years ago it received the Unesco Asia Pacific Merit Award for cultural heritage conservation.
Says Azmet: "My mother supervised everything. But my father is in the background financing everything. This is a family endeavour." He adds: "My mother has also really pushed the envelope."
Amongst other things, Esra also discovered seven tonnes of yellowing documents. A team of restorers and scholars is now going through them and ensuring they are preserved for posterity.
Esra, who had been brought up in Turkey after Kemal Ataturk's revolution, found Hyderabad in the 1960s quite a difficult place. Ataturk had banned the veil and encouraged women's education and Esra, herself, had studied architecture. She says: "It was more strict when I came here. I couldn't see who I wanted, couldn't go out and friends were chosen for me. People from outside thought it was all lovely and glamorous."
She also made efforts to learn Urdu — with mixed results. In London, she went to the School of Oriental and African Studies but the results amused her husband. "He laughed and said I was learning barracks language." She also enjoyed cooking, but found that she wasn't really expected to enter the kitchen in Hyderabad.
One of Esra's other achievements has been to retrieve an early 1900s Rolls Royce Silver Ghost used as a state limousine by the seventh Nizam and also two extremely rare 1906-model Napier L76 cars. The automobiles were handed over to vintage car restorer Manvendra Singh and another auto expert Chris Rodricks. The three cars won awards at the Cartier Concours d'Elegance last year in Mumbai. In some ways it might be an apt metaphor: in financial terms and in other ways too, her family is firmly back on the road once again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
.
There's another endearing sub-plot in her narrative. The relationship that the Princess shared with her father- in-law, Mir Osman Ali Khan - the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. Cousin to Princess Durrushevar (daughter of the last caliph of the Ottoman dynasty), Niloufer's hand was given in marriage to the Nizam's younger son, Moazzam Jah, keeping with a special `pact' signed between the two rulers. Durrushevar married the older sibling, Azam Jah.The November 12, 1931 wedding was an opulent event at Nice.
RETURN OF THE ROYALS
The 8th Nizam's first wife, Princess Esra, has
straightened out his impossibly tangled financial affairs and brought
his family back to Hyderabad, says Paran Balakrishnan
-
Pic By Penelope MacRae
The setting is the opulently restored Jade Room of the Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad where the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad once greeted the royals, aristocrats and commoners who trooped in to parley or pay homage to India's only 21-gun royal. The Falaknuma Palace has now been restored to its former splendour by the Taj Group aided by Princess Esra who ensured they didn't deviate from the original or cut corners during the mammoth restoration job that stretched on for over five years. "My role in all this has been to fuss and criticise," says Princess Esra, with perhaps more than a trace of modesty.
-
Prince Azmet Jah (far right) and his sister Shehkyar (centre) now divide their time between Hyderabad, London and Turkey; (far left) Girish Sehgal, general manager, the Taj Falaknuma; Pic: Vasu Gopu
Today, Mukarram, who's around 80, and who has five marriages behind him, has moved to Turkey, the land where his mother and his first wife Esra came from. Mukarram has an extremely distinguished lineage on his mother's side and is the grandson of the last Ottoman caliph, who was deposed after World War I. "He's very healthy, but isn't very mobile because of diabetes-related complications," says Azmet.
Princess Esra tells the story of the Maharaja of Baroda who divorced his wife and later called her back to help with family problems. "I was young. I thought what a fool. How could she go back? And 30 years later I found myself doing the same thing. Now I feel it was destiny. It was meant of me," says Esra.
In 1996, Mukarram turned to his first wife — and almost certainly the most intelligent of them all — and asked her to return to Hyderabad to sort out what was left of the family's property there. Says Esra: "He asked me to take on the problems, to take on whatever renovations could be made. I didn't want to. I was terrified. I didn't want to break the trust."
Esra had been away from Hyderabad for over 20 years after her divorce and the city she returned to was not the same languid-paced small city. She says: "I lived here for 16 years when I was married. I didn't come back for 20 years. But I had kept up my friendships."
After her divorce in the mid-1970s, Esra left the city and her children who were in school in England, also found themselves banished. Says Azmet: "We were told we could never come back to India and Hyderabad, so we switched to being Turkish and British."
The family rift lasted almost 20 years till 1994 when Mukarram, after many years in Australia, broke his silence and called his son. And, what was it like to be reunited after 20 years? "It was very emotional," says Azmet in a matter-of-fact tone.
-
(Above) Guests ride from the Falaknuma's main gate to its grand entrance in an open coach; (below) the Durbar Hall at Falaknuma.
Cut to 2014 and the entire family — including Prince Alexander Azam Jah, Mukarram's son by his second wife Helen — return regularly to Hyderabad. Azam's mother Helen died in the late 1980s and her second son Umar also died some years ago after a drug overdose. Azam is very close to Esra and his step-brother and step-sister and told one newspaper: "After my brother passed away, she took me under her wing and stood by me like a rock. I love Princess Esra with all my heart. She has been a mother to me when she needn't have been."
Mukarram's third wife Manolya and her daughter Niloufer also live in Hyderabad, but she's estranged from her ex-husband and his other families and has filed a suit for property she says was promised to her daughter.
Azmet, who trained as a cameraman — and who has worked with Steven Spielberg and on movies like Basic Instinct — has thrown himself into Hyderabadi life in a different way. He has almost completed a movie on his great-grandfather Osman Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam who's remembered for being on Time magazine's cover in 1938 as the richest man in the world — and also for being miserly on a heroic scale. Originally, Azmet had got leading broadcast celebrity Sir David Frost interested in the project, but Frost died before he could start work on it. Currently, a director from the BBC is making the film, which will be taken on the global festival circuit.
Azmet's hoping the world will look upon his great-grandfather in a different light after seeing his movie. "My great-grandfather is perceived as a miser. I want to dispel that myth. He has been very wrongly represented. He did a lot for Hyderabad."
Whether the seventh Nizam was the world's richest man or not, a large chunk of his legacy has vanished over the last 35 years. But in the last decade Esra, with the help of lawyer Vijay Shankardass, has straightened out the former Nizam's financial affairs to a considerable extent and reached settlements with many people who had made claims on the estate. Bear in mind that the seventh Nizam is said to have fathered 149 children or more, so the complexity of the legal tangles were immense.
And Falaknuma, which had been locked for many decades, has been renovated and given on a 30-year lease to the Taj Group. Says Esra: "We worked on every detail. We had to do things like the lighting and the air-conditioning without ruining the place. I worked with them like a worker shifting furniture and everything."
Simultaneously, the Chowmahalla Palace in the city was also renovated with the help of Intach founder Martand Singh and architect Rahul Mehrotra. Some years ago it received the Unesco Asia Pacific Merit Award for cultural heritage conservation.
Says Azmet: "My mother supervised everything. But my father is in the background financing everything. This is a family endeavour." He adds: "My mother has also really pushed the envelope."
Amongst other things, Esra also discovered seven tonnes of yellowing documents. A team of restorers and scholars is now going through them and ensuring they are preserved for posterity.
Esra, who had been brought up in Turkey after Kemal Ataturk's revolution, found Hyderabad in the 1960s quite a difficult place. Ataturk had banned the veil and encouraged women's education and Esra, herself, had studied architecture. She says: "It was more strict when I came here. I couldn't see who I wanted, couldn't go out and friends were chosen for me. People from outside thought it was all lovely and glamorous."
She also made efforts to learn Urdu — with mixed results. In London, she went to the School of Oriental and African Studies but the results amused her husband. "He laughed and said I was learning barracks language." She also enjoyed cooking, but found that she wasn't really expected to enter the kitchen in Hyderabad.
-
The restoration of the Chowmahalla Palace, supervised by Esra, was recognised by Unesco with its Asia Pacific Merit Award for cultural heritage conservation
One of Esra's other achievements has been to retrieve an early 1900s Rolls Royce Silver Ghost used as a state limousine by the seventh Nizam and also two extremely rare 1906-model Napier L76 cars. The automobiles were handed over to vintage car restorer Manvendra Singh and another auto expert Chris Rodricks. The three cars won awards at the Cartier Concours d'Elegance last year in Mumbai. In some ways it might be an apt metaphor: in financial terms and in other ways too, her family is firmly back on the road once again.
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