Riding the Indian Rails

Riding the Indian Rails, Walking the Indian Streets

On my last afternoon in Mumbai I had been invited to a private club on the waterfront by an
academic I had met through an earlier project.
As I waited in the club driveway, having walked there from the Gateway of India, I
watched a frail stick of a man, who had been pestering me with the offer of an ear clean, settle
himself into a squat and begin sorting his wires, oils and dirty pieces of cotton on the ground.
Only I noticed what was unfolding or if anyone else did they ignored it. A delivery truck
backing out of the drive swung to turn around and backed slowly over the bent figure, who,
incredibly, didnt notice, so absorbed he was in his meagre collection of tools.
I shouted and ran to the trucks open window, banging on the door. The driver stopped,
glared at me and began yelling abuse (thinking, what? That I was one of Mumbais stateless
tribe of foreign criminals and was about to hijack his truck?) but the halt, engine revving
angrily, was enough for someone else to warn the ear cleaner, and then drag him out of danger.
The driver accelerated in a cloud of diesel smoke and was gone, none the wiser as to the nasty
little life and death drama behind him, and the old man, seemingly none the wiser himself,
began whining at me again as he gathered his scraps.
My acquaintance appeared in a car with a driver, saw me, saw the ear cleaner, shouted at
him to make himself scarce and beckoned me into the car with her for the 15 metre drive to the
clubs entrance.
I told her what had just happened.
Those old fellows should know that ear cleaning and such on club premises is prohibited
in the regulations, was all she said, sternly.
Next afternoon I boarded the Hyderabad Express at Mumbais Dadar terminus, second
class, with a reserved seat.
It was good to be riding the rails again, railway trains being the place and focus of so much
of my decades long discovery of India. In my compartment were five Indian men in their early
20s, dressed in jeans and shirts and from time to time, other men, old and young, looked in and
chatted amiably with them. At first I thought they were speaking an Indian dialect that sounded
like none I had heard before. Then I realised it was English. No one had noticed or addressed
me, sitting quietly at the window reading. Then more men appeared at the open doorway and
entered, beckoned by the others, and sat squashed on the bench seats. I shifted closer to the
window. Then I noticed that the corridor was heaving with such men, walking back and forth,

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looking into other compartments, greeting each other. There were no women; the men were
clearly part of a large group.
I asked the young man beside me, sitting almost on my knee, where they were from, and
where they were going. His diffident answer, once I had deciphered it, astounded me. They
were from South Africa, and were on a pilgrimage to holy Islamic sites throughout India,
though he knew nothing about what they would be seeing in Hyderabad. He and his friends
had never been to India before, spoke no language other than English and didnt know where
their ancestors had migrated from. His English was not at all like the South African English
that I had heard before.
As the main area of communication between Australia and South Africa was sport, I said
that I was Australian, as he had not asked me, unlike an Indian who wouldve demanded to
know my native place immediately; I expected some response such as Id usually get in India,
about cricket (Bradleeeee!). But he said nothing for a while and then kangaroo (that feeble,
all purpose, signifier of Australia), and then retreated into silence. I know I was about 45 years
older than these boys, but I dont look scary and guess I mightve expected a little more.
I asked where in South Africa they were from.
Durban.
All of you?
Some. Also Cape Town.
We were getting somewhere. I inquired whether he supported the Stormers Rugby Union
team, the Cape Town franchise that competes with other South African teams with New
Zealand and Australian teams in the super rugby competition. Or the Sharks from Durban. I
might have been asking him about the Kilkenny hurling team. Springboks? I asked wanly. I
thought to myself that if thered been a group of young Indian men of this age in the
compartment, I mean Indian nationals, I would now be trying to hide from them, so pressing
and vociferous, curious and knowledgeable would they be. All right, I couldve asked about
cricket, but being in India for a few weeks had worn out my interest in the subject.
I left him and his friends and went out to the corridor to stretch my legs. The entire car was
full, I now realised, with members of the group. There was not a woman to be seen. Perhaps
the whole train, though I hadnt noticed anything unusual amid the familiar turmoil and
clamour at the Mumbai station.
When I returned my seat was taken. The boys looked at me blankly at first, as if they had
never laid eyes on me, then they crowded up making room. There seemed to be an ambient
tension amongst them that wasnt there before. I returned to my book which was a Salman

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Rushdie; not the best author to have on display in a train full of Moslems I suddenly thought.
It wasnt The Satanic Verses but The Moors Last Sigh, and this was 2009, a decade after the
ayatollah Khomeinis death sentence; but there was always the chance that someone would
remember.
After an hour or so an older man looked in, approached me, and asked if I would leave the
compartment whilst they prayed. I replied that they could pray if they wanted and it wouldnt
bother me.
No, you must leave, he responded tersely. Now!
That was the sort of authoritarian demand that would normally be difficult for me to
comply with, but here I was, a minority of one, as far as I could tell, and relations between the
West and Islam had not been altogether harmonious in recent years.
As I stood to go, all the youths began pulling white robes from their bags and putting them
on over their clothes, putting on caps, and splashing their faces and hands from water bottles.
Thank you, sir, said the older man, no longer terse.
The corridor was no place to hide, the men were everywhere, settling to pray.
I manoeuvred myself onto the platform at the door and tried to peer through the smudged
window. I was actually interested in surveying this railway line if I can put it like that. A
distant relative, William Faviell, had been involved in building the railway over the Western
Ghats, something I had only become aware of recently. I had been on these lines across the
ghats before, on the Deccan Queen to Pune, but had been more interested in the chaos and
colour aboard the train and at stations than the engineering feats that had allowed the railways
to become the most indispensable infrastructure of India the great engines of social
improvement according to Lord Dalhousie, the governor-general of India who launched the
age of railway development; (Dalhousie listed as other engines of social improvement uniform
Postage and the Electric Telegraph).
The book Engines of Change: The Railroads that Made India by Ian Kerr (2006), notes
that GIPR (Great Indian Peninsular Railway) contract number 8 to build the Bhore Incline was
won by William Frederick Faviell. Prior to this, Faviell, whose father had been involved in
canal construction and other public works in England, was responsible for the first line of
railway opened for public traffic in India, from Bombay to nearby Tanna, and the first use of a
locomotive engine in Asia, beginning on 23 February 1852, for ballasting the track near
Bombay (also for the GIPR). Faviell had assumed responsibility for this project when the lead
contractor, Henry Fowler, became ill and had to return to England after only a few months.

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At first Faviells work on the Bhore Incline proceeded smoothly. By the end of January
1857 work was taking place on all parts of the incline, bridges and viaducts were underway
and the long tunnel near Khandalla was being tackled on a 24 hour basis by three shifts of
workers.
Then things started to go wrong. In a version of the sorts of strategies made an art form by
unscrupulous employers today, Faviell, claiming that he could not afford to proceed under the
agreed payment schedules, converted his agents (paid employees) into risk accepting
subcontractors, who thus had additional motivation to cut costs and to squeeze labour.
Throughout his activities in India, it is alleged, Faviell sought to ensure his own profit. His
partner in an earlier contract had called him a conceited and obstinate man with a very
disagreeable and offensive manner who treated people under him as if they were dogs or
inferior beings.
Relations were appalling between the British employers and the Indian workforce,
unsurprisingly. Pay was often in arrears, and some payments were cut in half. Violent protests
broke out, sticks and stones being the preferred weapons.
Faviells contract was terminated in March 1859 and he went on to build railways in
Ceylon and South America, successfully by all accounts. He retired comfortably to England
where he died in 1902 at the fair old age of 80, despite the assaults on his health brought by his
time in the tropics.
The construction of the lines southeast of Bombay, as with lines all over the subcontinent,
was an immensely complex process. As Engines of Change notes, Indians built the railroads;
they did most of the work and most of the dying. The projects themselves were British and
there was a hierarchy of British interests from politicians, investors, company boards and
management, supervising engineers, administrators and suppliers in Britain and India, through
to engineers and skilled workers on the ground in India.
On site, the living and working conditions of the British were much superior to those of
the Indians, but they were as subject to the many diseases that prevailed. Cholera, for example,
killed 25 percent of the Europeans at work on the Bhore Ghat Incline in April and May 1860.
All over India diseases such as cholera, smallpox, pneumonia, typhoid, black water fever and
malaria were an ever-present hazard. One terrified British surveyor working on the ghat section
of the Travancore Railway Survey in the early 1880s wrote to his supervisor, that fever and
wild beasts made his work really dangerous and he sought compensation for his family
should anything happen to him.

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The Western Ghats the Hyderabad Express was now flying across climb to only about 610
metres, but they do rise abruptly and in rugged folds from the narrow coastal plain. The need
to traverse this formidable country was debated and surveyed for years before the decision was
made to proceed in 1856. Today bridges, viaducts and tunnels carry the rails and we travel for
most of the time oblivious to the tremendous challenges of construction. I had so often stood
on the platform where I now stood, looking out the doorway (on passenger trains with open
doors) or through the window on expresses; I had observed those long steel trussed bridges on
brick piers across immense rivers of water or sand, depending on the season, or viaducts across
plummeting gorges, but had never really focused on the weighty engineering, political and
social costs of the building.
Rudyard Kiplings short story The Bridge Builders gives the flavour of the railroad
construction of the day with a dose of fantasy. Bridges nearly two miles long, on 27 brick
piers, required a humming village of five thousand workmen. The Hindu gods enter the tale;
Ganesh talks about villages brought together by fire carriages and the opportunity for pilgrims
to more readily reach holy sites, while Krishna observes, the beginning of the end is born
already, the fire carriages shout the names of the new Gods that are not the old under new
names. Earlier, in 1887, Kipling, in a story for an Anglo-Indian newspaper, observed that,
Men worked in those days by thousands in the blinding sun glare, and in the choking hot night
under the light of flare lamps, building the masonry, dredging and sinking, and sinking and
dredging-out.
I returned to my compartment. There were at least a dozen men in there; prayers had
finished and some had the hysterical gaze of people emerging from a trance. Anyway, I pushed
forward to my seat in as friendly a manner as possible. It was evening and as they emerged
from wherever their prayers had taken them the boys unpacked snacks and soft drinks from
their bags. The robes had gone and soon normalcy returned to their faces.
I had a prepacked tiffin, but the compartment was so crowded that there was no room to
eat; I couldnt move my arms.
Dont your friends have their own seats? I asked one next to me, no longer the boy Id
spoken to before.
At this moment a conductor appeared and in the quite aggressive manner of many of his
fellows began shouting that as the berths would soon need to be converted for sleeping,
passengers must revert to your own seatings.
I took the top bunk, hoping for no disturbance; some of the young men slept, others talked
quietly and I was only disturbed by the occasional something flung up onto my bed, and the

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compressed howl of a passing express in one of the routes long, long tunnels. As I drifted in
and out of sleep I reflected that it was perhaps one of the most comfortable nights I had
experienced aboard an Indian train. These devout young men, despite my grumbles about the
number who sometimes pressed into the compartment, and the other occasion for prayers
(when I refused to leave), and their lack of curiosity and conversation, actually were a relief;
had they been Indian, as I mentioned, the noise would have been ceaseless, and one or two
might have found their way on to my berth, just looking for somewhere to lie down.
The calm ended in the early morning. At 5.30 the train pulled into Hyderabad, and the
usual uproar ensued as the passengers, hundreds of South African pilgrims among them, poured
from the train, amidst the hubbub of shouting coolies, touts, taxi-drivers, and encampments of
family and travelling groups awaiting other trains. The sign UNAVOIDABLE CROWDING
CAUSES INCONVENIENCE carried a deep message but I couldnt quite get my head around it.
I walked out to the streets and found, not far from the station, a hotel. It was some years
since I had been at home in fleapits, despite finding myself in them all too often, and fortunately
in the time since, business hotels had appeared, a few of them giving comfort and cleanliness,
and well below the price of the lavish, pretentious palace hotels with their doormen dressed
like Rajput warriors and decorative receptionists in shimmering silk.
Some of the business hotels feature conference rooms, with every modern gadget, as well
as habits which endure: when I entered at about 6.30, reception staff, cleaning boys and various
parties whose roles I couldnt discern, were asleep on the floor and in the reception lounges. I
had only wanted to leave my bag, have breakfast and then head out to explore Hyderabad, but
the front desk clerk, when roused, was pleased to tell me that we are not running full and was
able to send me to my room.
Happily it was made up, and unlike a time in Saigon when I checked in similarly early,
there was nobody in the bed. On that occasion, at the famous Continental, there was a man
sound asleep, an Indian I guessed by the look of him. I went downstairs and reported it to the
girl at the desk.
Theres an Indian in my bed, I said indignantly.
The girl looked at her register.
Accuse me, she answered crossly, he is not Indian. He is from Bangladesh.
With no Indian or Bangladeshi in the room I was able to shower in peace and think about
spending the day in Hyderabad. Then I went out to the lift vestibule where I found the following
notice: LIFT NOT AVAILABLE FOR GOING DOWN. This was a perplexing feature of this
particular hotel, the reason for which was never revealed.

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I descended the stairs and walked out into the streets, a bit dreamily as I was thinking about
the title of Ved Mehtas marvellous book, Walking the Indian Streets, which I was just off to
do myself. But it was 2009 not 1959. A speeding motorbike nearly caught me, so close that
the elbow of the passenger hit my chest hard. I reeled back but didnt fall, and retreated to the
footpath, seething as it was, to collect myself. Nobody had noticed my brush with near disaster,
the motorbike continued on its high speed way, and I thought how lucky I was. The
consequences of such an accident would have been profound.
I hailed a taxi, thinking I would take it to Golconda for the day. If I liked the car and
driver I would use him the following day. This vehicle was not promising. It was something
of a heap and the first thing I noticed was that the meter was not working.
I mentioned this to the driver.
Very apologetically, he revealed that the meter had fused and caught on fire, but his fare
would be lower than any meter fare each and every day.
Tell me one meter fare, he challenged, and I will tell my fare.
This was highly unorthodox, I thought, so to avoid disappointment I asked the driver to
take me to the Charminar, which was much closer than Golconda.
The driver proved to be quite an entertainment, so I decided to stay with him.
Near the Charminar, he told me where he would find me, advised me to be alert for thieves,
and to not buy sunglasses, soaps, bangles, perfumes, wedding cloths (sic), walkie talkies,
fantasy items and such from itinerants, but only in shops that he would bring me to. Especially
PEARLS! he shouted.
Before this I asked him the fare. He asked me in turn my preferred fare, or my estimate of
what the meter fare would be.
Twenty, I guessed.
He must have thought, this is my lucky day!
My fare, mister, is only ten.
I was impressed, and he became my driver for the next few days.
The traffic through Hyderabad was an astonishing bedlam, which Iqbal, as the driver was
called, blamed rather unfairly on the scooterists.
See them, he charged, they are driving like snakes. And are dangerous as snakes. I liked
it that he was a careful driver, though the thing about driving in Indian towns is that it is
generally at very low speed, and seems to flow as if the road traffic is on a continuum with the
footpath traffic, which indeed it is; each overflows to the other, and each is used by an arresting
assortment of jostling creatures and vehicles.

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Driving on the open road between towns is quite another matter. You needed to be an
artist with the steering wheel, Iqbal told me the next day.
I walked through a bazaar to the Charminar, a lovely symmetrical gateway with four
minarets each of 56 metres. It was built by Mohammed Quli Shah in 1591 to commemorate an
epidemic. I had climbed one of the tight spiral staircases years ago but this time I found the
doors locked. Climbing was now forbidden after four people had jumped to their deaths.
Walking around it and then into the teeming, seemingly infinite bazaar area I was literally
chased by a phalanx of sellers of things that Iqbal had warned me against. Later we drove to
the Makka Masjid, the largest mosque in southern India; it was Saturday and we could not get
near it; security was very tight following a bombing several years earlier. From there we went
to have a look at the Andhra Pradesh high court, a monstrous, fanciful 19th century building in
the distinctive Indo-Saracenic (or Mughal-Gothic) style. Around and about in encampments
under trees were the usual typing and secretarial services, though in these digital days, with
greater literacy, there was less demand and so a great deal of enforced idleness. Rather like the
fate of baggage coolies at stations in these times of rolling suitcases and middle classes whove
noticed that people like them all over the world manage their own luggage.
Near the high court, in a park along the river bank, was an ensemble of seated men,
laughing loudly, and wriggling hysterically.
Laughing men, explained Iqbal.
Why are they doing that?
Because its Saturday.
Naturally.
That night I had dinner in the hotel restaurant and was the focus of interest for a couple of
waiters, whose short, once-smart waiter jackets, as befit a business hotel, were greasy with
finger marks. Artists with gravy and snot. There were plenty of Indian businessmen here, but I
was the only foreigner. As a Moslem city Hyderabad seemed to make a virtue of feeding the
men meat, and I hunted the menu for a vegetarian option. When I asked a waiter for suggestions
he ignored my preference and kept pointing to dishes of mutton and chicken, unable to imagine,
perhaps, why someone would go for vegetarian when they were not bound by religious or caste
restrictions.
I finally located a dish of cheese and peas; fortunately I boosted my image with the waiter,
wiping his thumb from its encounter with my cheese and peas, with an order for a bottle of
beer.

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In the morning I put my few items for washing in the laundry bag and went to fill in the
form. It comprised (sic) dhoti, lungi, Arab thobe, Arab kurta, boiler suit, Safari Suit, cap, kurta,
Blanket, Salwar Kameez, dupatta, but nothing that I could assign my rather everyday clothes
to. Then I went out of my way to find a South Indian place for breakfast, near the station. A
plate of idlies and sambal, uttapam and a pot of Mysore coffee.
At ten Iqbal collected me for the 10 km drive to Golconda. It was a Sunday and there
seemed to be a festive atmosphere. Lots of traffic on the roads, families crammed into jeeps
and vans, hanging out of throbbing auto rickshaws and packed aboard scooters behind those
crazy snake-like scooterists.
On the way Iqbal warned me about the guides at Golconda who would do their best to rob
me. He couldnt be my guide as the guides there would make troubles for him.
You must take a government approved guide. There will be unapproved guides. Such
guides are approved only by tricks and cheatings. That is why they are unapproved. Their
approval is unapproved approval.
Climbing the hills towards the monument we saw family groups settling in for a days
picnicking, some with tents. Many had a fire started and a young goat tethered to a tree beside
them or the car wheel. At first I imagined that baby goats were the preferred pet of the children
but Iqbal disabused me. The goats, of course, were the picnic.
The hints of bloody pastimes continued. Not far from Golconda we slowed for a herd of
very young cattle being driven along the road by boys with sticks.
The cows will go and cut their necks, informed Iqbal. Would I like to see?
To change the subject I asked Iqbal why the kilometre reading of his rather old car seemed
stalled at 8,000kms. I knew the meter had caught fire, maybe that damaged all the cables? The
answer was altogether simpler, and brilliant.
Free service is provided at 8,000. My taxi has enjoyed four free services.
There were men camped under broken down trucks, or just enjoying sleeping in the shade.
The heat was building; July on the Deccan. It would be 45 degrees by midday. We passed a
sign, AN EYE IN TIME SAVES A BLIND, DONATE AN EYE, and another, AWARE ALERT
ACCIDENTS AVERT. Another, KINGFISHER BEER, MOST THRILLING CHILLED.
Remembering a family planning slogan from the seventies, WHEN YOU HAVE TWO THAT
WILL DO, I said to Iqbal, You people seem to like catchy messages.
We are simple people, he replied candidly, but many are too simple for such message.
They cannot read English. Vernacular message is preferred. Thank you.

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The sky was of a white hazy blue. But infinite, with no sign of the impending monsoon;
high wheeling birds of prey were fast moving specks. I recalled seeing them alarmingly close
when I was in a plane lining up for Nagpur, still at a height of a couple of thousand feet, the
birds rocketing past the wings like black darts.
Golconda is vast. Iqbal stopped at a dusty car park where there were numerous coaches,
taxis and cars. Colourful crowds milled about awaiting family heads or tour leaders to take
charge. The only other foreigners I saw amidst the throng was a group of Italians emerging
from a mini-bus. They gasped noisily and together when they felt the tremendous heat, and I
gasped when I saw their ridiculous clothing. Some tour company or persuasive tailor had them
all dressed in poorly made and fitted Indian outfits; tawdry, glittery, gaudy, turbans unravelling,
they looked like extras playing dancing eunuchs or deranged nabobs in a camp Bollywood
pantomime. And totally unsuited to the several hours of walking that an exploration of
Golconda would require.
Golconda allows glimpses of the tremendous vitality and magnificence of the 16th century
Deccan scene. The Deccan is the great heart of the Indian subcontinent, a vast elevated plateau
of ancient, eroded hills, which was invaded time and time again by northerners. Islamic
architecture spread and became established under the Bahamani kings from the mid 14th
century. Gulbarga and Bidar were successive Bahamani capitals during a rich period of trade
across the Arabian Sea luxury goods like silk, spices, precious stones and metals sent west,
in exchange for ideas, artists, architects and poets from Persia, Turkey and Arabia moving east
to Delhi, Agra and the Deccan; a trade sponsored by Indias extravagant, cultivated but brutal
royals.
The independent kingdom of Golconda became renowned for painted fabrics known as
kalamkari, as well as diamonds and other gems, gem cutting and jewellery.
No less an explorer than Marco Polo reported that:
This kingdom produces diamonds. Let me tell you how they are got When it rains the water
rushes down through these mountains, scouring its way through mighty gorges and caverns.
When the rain has stopped and the water has drained away, then the men go in search of the
diamonds through these gorges from which the water has come, and they find plenty. In
summer when there is not a drop of water to be found, then the diamonds can be found in plenty
among the mountains.

The Bahamani rulers were a breakaway group of Turkoman origin whose founder was
Qutub Shah. In alliance with four other Deccani rulers, they defeated the great Hindu
civilization of Vijayanagara of Hampi in 1565 and following the flow of prestige, wealth and
slaves moved their capital from the high fort of Golconda to Hyderabad.

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At Golconda I decided to forget the swarming guides, approved and unapproved, and
unapproved approved, and walk about by myself in peace. In peace is more a wishful
sentiment than achievable; the whole way I was assailed by would-be guides, small boys with
menacing looking slingshots, teenage boys out for an afternoon of talking at foreigners,
foreigners who were stupefied by the heat and just had alert another foreigner, Indian family
groups whose head of family imagined that these must be my first days in India and would ask,
how are you liking our India? and have you such forts to compare in your native state? who
insisted on having me included in their snaps, and persisted in offering me bits of their tiffin,
and security guards who kept telling me that I couldnt walk where I wanted to I couldnt go
here, I couldnt go there, despite hundreds of Indians walking where they pleased.
It seemed as if a huge population was following me as I climbed hundreds of metres up the
hill through the great fortifications via massive, elephant proof, spike-armoured gates (side,
this side, SIDE, SIDE, STOP! a guard would shout, directing me with his swinging bamboo
lathi, ignoring 1500 other people). There are magnificent archways, ruins of palaces and
harems, courts of justice, camel stables and the Jami Masjid, the Friday mosque built by Quli
Qutub Shah in 1518.
I made my way down from the heights, chased for a while by a shouting guard, towards
the Qutub Shahi Tombs, over 80 elegant and decorated complexes which compete with any of
those from iconic northern sites such as Delhi.
Mughal incursions from the north were a regular threat to the Deccan kingdoms and in
1687 Aurangzeb finally captured Golconda after a remorseless eight month siege.
In China once I joked that the Nizam of Hyderabad was an Australian, setting off an hour
of furrowed brows amongst the people I was with (not to mention translating nizam into
Chinese; they settled on the word for warlord which wasnt bad, since that is how most royal
lines begin and maintain themselves). But now I wanted to find out more of the story of the
Hyderabadi rulers.
During the colonial period the Asaf Jah dynasty of Hyderabad were firm allies of the
British (for their own survival), existing as an independent state in British territory. The Asaf
Jahs had been supplicant viceroys during the Mughal era until 1724 when Mughal rule
collapsed. They became an independent principality again, the largest and most prosperous
under British rule. Many princely states agreed to cede power to India upon independence, but
Hyderabad held out it was a state of over 17m people, after all, with its own army and post,
telecommunications and transport systems. The majority of people were Hindus but Moslems
dominated in the state administration and army.

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The state was the size of Italy, and the wealthiest in India; the seventh nizam, at the time
of incorporation, Osman Ali Khan, was considered the richest man in the world, with some
500m pounds in gold, silver and diamonds, much of it from the nizams own mines (the Koh-
I-Noor diamond had come from here). As well as sumptuous palaces, he owned vast libraries,
collections of Mughal and Deccani miniatures, illuminated Korans and rare Indo-Islamic
manuscripts. The British regarded the Nizam of Hyderabad as the most senior prince in the
land, although Dalhousie, in proposing to push the railway southeast through Hyderabad to
connect with a line running northwest from Madras, had remarked dismissively that the then
nizam might be a foreign potentate, but he was wholly helpless in our hands.
By the time of Indian independence, the dynasty was in its twilight years. According to an
observer who was there at the time, Iris Portal, (in conversation with William Dalrymple), the
last nizam was as mad as a coot and his chief wife was raving. All power was in the hands of
a decadent Moslem nobility who spent money recklessly and were terrible landlords; in many
ways Hyderabad was still in the middle ages and the villages were desperately poor. You
couldnt help feeling that the whole great baroque structure would come crashing down at any
moment.
It was like France on the eve of the revolution.
In 1948, in the fancifully named Operation Polo, the Indian army invaded Hyderabad,
deposed the nizam, and annexed the state into the Union of India. Titles like nizam and related
privileges were abolished in 1974.
And the Australian link?
Born in 1934, Mukarram Jah, the grandson of Osman Ali Khan, moved to a sheep station
in Western Australia in 1979. Much married, his past and present littered with polygamy and
costly divorces, his energies were spent trying to reduce the extravagant overheads his
predecessors had gifted him. These included nearly 15,000 staff and dependants, 42 of his
grandfathers concubines and their dependents, 38 people employed to dust chandeliers and so
forth. In Australia, according to William Dalrymple, that great chronicler of the Mughals, he
donned blue overalls and spent his days under the bonnets of his cars or driving bulldozers. As
his biographer, John Zubrzycki, put it in The Last Nizam: "His grandfather composed couplets
in Persian about unrequited love. To Jah's ears there was nothing more poetic than the drone
of a diesel engine."
The disintegration of the state, the dispersal of the wealth of the nizam is one of the
20th centurys most dramatic reversals of fortune, observes Dalrymple. The plundering of
personal and state property continued unabated with the last nizams absence.

Murray Laurence 12
Riding the Indian Rails

However in recent years several family members and professionals have begun saving
what is left. Palaces have been restored, manuscripts are being archived, with some being put
on display.
From Hyderabad I decided to take a long-distance train, with no particular destination in
mind. At the station, on a whim, I booked a ticket on the Hyderabad-Ernakulum Sabari Express
and took off for the west coast and Kerala, to see what had changed since I was last there in
1974.
Walking the Indian streets and riding the Indian rails.

Murray Laurence 13