The Nawab's Last Sigh

Rudely awakened by the fact of independent India, an aristocrat in Meerut clung to his past. Now, he tells Sunaina Kumar, all he has left are his memories of a glorious age.

- Sunaina Kumar

The Nawab and his wife

WHEN Afzal Ahmad Khan was 11 years old, his older brother told him, in no uncertain terms, that he could never be seen in public informally dressed. To this day, 80 years later, he steps out of his home, whether under the scorching sun or pelting rain, impeccably clad in one of his three sherwanis, all black and buttoned up to the neck. He wears it the only way a sherwani should be worn, with a topi and handmade shoes.

When we met one December morning, in the dying embers of the year gone by, the cold weather had taken its toll on his health. Fluridden, he had been mostly confined to his bed, not unusual perhaps for most nonagenarians, but Khan is still sprightly, still active. Dressed in a sweater, a crisp white kurta and pyjama, he was surprised by my arrival and complained about being underdressed. “I am the last nawab of Meerut,” he said grandly, “and I bear some responsibility. Please wait, so I can dress appropriately.” He returned, of course, in a sherwani, finally ready to grant me an audience.

Starched and stiff, the aristocratic title of ‘nawab of Meerut’, masks, even mocks, the reduced circimustances in which Khan finds himself. His haveli in Khair Nagar, the densest part of the city, is nondescript. All around him is chaos, houses and shops cheek by jowl, rickshaws, hand-pulled carts, and everywhere people and cattle—a working class ghetto, populated in the main by Muslim welders, carpenters and plumbers unlikely to have time to spare a thought for their illustrious neighbour.

A regal bearing