India to me has always meant Hyderabad. Hyderabad in the hot flush of summer, sparkling at festivals, decked in all its finery at marriages and deep indigo in death.

My first memory of Hyderabad was probably a mixture of fragrances. The exotic aroma of jasmine placed under every pillow in the house at dusk, the heavy musk of insect repelling incense being taken from room to room by the maid reciting verses of the Koran, the bitter smell of neem leaves being boiled for our baths, the scent of wild Indian rose from my eldest grandmother and French perfume from the youngest. And, most sharply, the fragrant sandalwood in my hair.

All memories appear and disappear against the backdrop of our ancestral house Khan Balik, named after the summer home of the great Genghis Khan. It sat in a compound of five houses, the one in the centre belonged to my great grandfather and the four smaller ones were built for his four wives. By the time I was born three houses had already been appropriated by the government, the last two would revert at the passing of both my great grand uncle and my grandfather. Numerous bedrooms, long winding corridors, cool marble floors, multi-shuttered windows, high ceilings and a perpetual hum of muted conversation, faint music and laughter trickling though the lattice ventilators were disturbed only by the call to prayer five times a day.

Corridors lined with coloured hanging pumpkin lights, rooms decorated with animal skins and trophies, large priceless Ming vases and books from all over the world held court. Drawers laden with silverware, Venetian mirrors with painted scenes and finely cracked Wedgwood plates mirrored our every expression. Belgian crystal chandeliers and doorknobs were coated with attar that wafted on the hems of rustling fabric hiding jewelled feet. And finally, the tragically beautiful derelict tapestry fans that fluttered in mute mortification in the wind of their modern versions. All these had their esteemed place, as did all the humans in this grand house and specially me the first great grandchild. It was like living in a jewel box – textures vied with colours and fought failing battles with gloss and shine.

Since most of the elders observed purdah, traders came to the back entrance, from vegetable sellers to silk merchants, from the dhobi to the jewellers and the pundits...my grandfather a six-foot-six Pathan was also known as panch seri nawab. This signified his capacity to consume five ser of rice in one sitting. This rice of course was especially sent from a rice field somewhere in Pakistan famed for its outstanding and rare fragrance. These sacks always arrived with the insignia of the chrysanthemum throne of Japan and our family name printed below. This was the only paddy field that the Japanese royal family got their rice from for hundreds of years. Honeydew melons came from Afghanistan, pistachios from Iran, dates from Iraq and opium from Tashkent. The other precious foods were saffron from the crocus flower of the Kashmir highlands and morel mushrooms from Lahore..

The traditions of the house were wide and varied. From different wives and cars to different areas for males and females, we also had different kitchens for vegetarian and non-vegetarian food and needless to say different cooks, the most important being the one who made sweetmeats. Abdul Rehman had my grandfather’s ear and was the most powerful and the most feared of the three dozen odd domestics. He had a sorcerer’s talent for lacing any dessert or sweet with aphrodisiacal, gripe inducing, hallucinatory or poisonous ingredients….he was my most favourite of all the domestics and from him came my pet name of Begum Para.

The sheds at the rear of the compound had a line-up of cars of all shapes and sizes most of them however never ever functioned. Half of those that did however were in purdah. The clearest memory I have is of us cousins and aunts piled in to go to the annual all India exhibition. These trips were of supreme importance to my young aunts who spent sleepless nights on what they would wear, how they would get messages sent to their potential love interests and how they would sit by the car door to allow for the edge of their dupatta to show so the concerned individual could spot the car his lady love was in.... Bribery and corruption was rampant in our little world as we did favours, watched doors and stole the old heavy black phones and crawled from room to room on all fours to avoid detection.

Shaded from the harsh summer sun the khas-lined coolers tempered the days that were passed in strange pursuits peculiar only to Hyderabad. Competitions held for eating the maximum number of mangoes and raw tamarind left our tongues softened with mango pulp and cut with tamarind while hide and peek exposed more and hid less than most of the adults would have liked. We girls were taught exotic braiding of the hair, home remedies for beautifying ourselves and wily recipes to find everlasting love. Rearranging my grandmother’s jewellery drawers according to the colour of the gems while trying on each piece, brought delicious delight as did dressing up as Anarkali and reading dog-eared comics borrowed from second-hand libraries. Lessons in Urdu and casual history and readings of the great Sufis guaranteed the gentle drugging of all the children to deep sleep every noon.

The cool Deccan nights were spent on the expansive roof of the house. Beds were lined with mosquito netting and maids went from person to person gently washing feet in ceramic basins and placing them on the beds. The elders gave lessons in astronomy and the stars were charted with pudgy fingers held lovingly in gnarled hands. Ghost stories grew more horrific and unbelievable each year and finally the adults gossiped in whispers as we fell asleep, only to be carried down at dawn, softly drenched in dew.

Once a year, however we would shift en masse into the catacombs under the Qutub Shahi tombs; tented structures, carpets, beddings, domestics and hoards of utensils were transported including dressing tables, gramophones and radios. Adults spent all day at shikar in the surrounding wild, at dusk we would slide into the magic spell of the tombs enveloped by moonlight and music and spend till midnight chasing ghostly myths amongst the ruins. Many a great love story began here without the traditional segregations of the house. The other important trip was made to the small town of Viqarabad. This had been given in dowry to my great grandmother and my mother is named Viqar after it. The word itself means ‘dawn’ and it is where our ancestral tombs exist still.

All rites and rituals were strictly adhered to in my grandfather’s house. The shaving of my head at 40 days, tasting of the first grain, the piercing of my ears, my initiations into the learning of the holy script, the celebration of my coming of age and finally of my marriage at 17 were all held in grand Islamic style. My grandmother’s takhat posh, the khada dupatta in our family colours, flower jewellery, henna designs spun with needle and thread, bathing in turmeric milk and rosewater, the blessing of 21 goats for charity and being weighed in silver all enfolded by the sounds of ghazals, qawallis, sher shahiri and readings from the Koran and presided over by three grandmothers made my marriage unforgettable.

Weddings were almost two weeks long, my great aunt Asima’s being the most elaborate. Her invitations were of pure silver, clothes were woven with her name in real gold, the desserts had gold leaf and the paans had crushed pearls in them…her wedding lasted 11 days and nights. Asima Begum was an innocent beauty with an iron willed heart. She rejected proposals on the excuse that the man in question had never made an effort to get to know her or romance her as she deserved, which meant celluloid style. She finally married a man who not only charmed her by sending 365 outfits with matching shoes and jewellery in 365 shades of colour but also discovered and accepted her secret habit of smoking by sending her an exquisite Cartier cigarette holder…. Needless to say we all fell in love with him too.

Our birthdays were marked by the tying of a pearl in a knot to a silken skein of coloured thread that hung in my grandfather’s almirah. My colour was turquoise blue befitting my name. The most fun was at festival times when if you didn’t wake early enough and didn’t get to the dyer first to choose your own unique colour combination, you could end up at Eid dinner drably dressed in a colour so dark a grey that you may be deemed to be in mourning.... Eid dinners were set on the rooftop laid out with low divans and banquet style placements. Tall mirrors were placed along one side of the setting so as to allow both sides to have the pleasure of the sighting of the moon. I spent most of the evenings peering at the mirrors trying to spot other child cousins and the hopeful possibility of some adult beauty in myself.

My great great grandfather had four wives, two of whom bore girl children who did not survive. On the insistence of a Hindu pundit the next girl child was given a male name and the child survived. Henceforth we have followed many generations of this tradition, my daughter being the fifth generation named Alaiia for my Turkish great grandmother’s family. My grandfather also married twice. His second wife who was English was my grandmother. A beautiful tall Oxford educated redhead who while converting to Islam and being in purdah for many of her early years in Hyderabad, insisted on keeping pets, a completely forbidden thing to do. Her endless peculiar entourage, however, made our vacations unforgettable. Pepo the wicked monkey, Sammy the black cat, Leo the leopard, the croaking cockatoo, the two all white German Shepherds Snowy and Whitey and two snakes that spent most of their time knotted to a curtain rod.

One could never visit and not morph into the wondrous old ways of the house. Speech became flowery like the beautiful Urdu spoken, idioms and couplets spilled like sweet nectar and an overriding desire to be dressed as an archaic Mughal princess persisted for days.

Our childhood I realise only now was played out during the last dying moments of a grand old city of great historical importance and Islamic culture. The Mughals, the Qutub Shahis and the great Nizams had with their immense wealth culture and excesses put Hyderabad on the world map for all time. From the glittering galis of Laad Bazaar to Van Cleef & Arpels in Paris, to the crystal makers in Belgium my grandparents commanded both respect and awe...because they were from Hyderabad, land of the Nizam once the richest man in the world, whose famed 150 wives were well known by jewellers and craftsmen in Europe. The land of the famous Golconda diamonds, land of exquisite language, cuisine, music, homes and great style….

To me Hyderabad will always signify a Muslim way of life seen nowhere else in India…today there exist none of the great houses or the families, or the culture that once signified the Hyderabad way. All that remains alas of this lost culture and precious world is my velvet lined drawers of forgotten jewels, my name, a family tree from the 1300s and my memories of a life less ordinary.

Feroze Gujral is a diver, dreamer, writer, shooter, mother, model, muse, catalyst, traveller and elephant chaser.

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