Of the Nizam of Hyderabad it can be truly said that he is the man who has everything. In his 72 years, he ruled a state of 18 million people, bossed a brilliantly uniformed army of 22,000 men, had a fortune estimated at $2 billion. In his sprawling King Kothi palace, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, pearls and lesser gems are stored in $3 steel trunks fastened with "English-made padlocks."
He has had an eye for women ever since his teens, when his doting mother began giving him beautiful girls as birthday presents. As a devout Moslem, he had four legal wives as well as 42 zenana companions, who have all the benefits and privileges of marriage except legality. With the help of legal wives, begums, concubines and birthday presents, the Nizam has sired more than 50 children.
The Favorite. Some 20 years ago, the Nizam met the love of his life—a dancing girl named Leila who became one of his begums, has since presented him with five sons and two daughters. Last week, in the familiar role of father of the bride, the Nizam presided over the wedding of Mash-Hadi, the 19-year-old eldest daughter of Favorite Leila.
Like many another wealthy man, the Nizam keeps his billions because he is careful of his pennies. He decreed that the wedding was to be a simple family affair and did not illuminate the walls of his palace with the multicolored electric lights that are a feature even of middle class Indian weddings. The bridegroom, Nawab Mahmood Jung, who comes of an aristocratic Hyderabad family that ranks just below the Nizam, drove up to the palace in a 100-car motorcade, wearing a cloth-of-gold coat and a sun-sparkling necklace of diamonds and emeralds. His face was delicately veiled by strings of orange blossoms and arum lilies specially flown in from Bangalore, 300 miles away.
The bride, according to Moslem custom, waited in another room during the wedding ceremony, attired in a rose-pink silk sari heavy with gems and gold embroidery, and wearing a pearl necklace and earrings. She had been bathed in rose water, massaged with scented sandalwood oil, perfumed with attar of roses; her nails, the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet were stained with henna.
Palace of One's Own. In honor of the young couple, the happy Nizam proudly recited three Persian odes that he had composed himself. He garlanded them with flowers, after first pointing out that never before had a Nizam so bedecked a bride and groom, and in a burst of generosity made a cash grant of $21 a month to two local orphanages. The Nizam also promised to build the couple a palace next to his own, and settled on them a trust fund of undisclosed size—something he did not do for any of the five other begum daughters he has married off.
The wedding had a special meaning for another of the Nizam's offspring, Shahazadi Pasha, his eldest daughter by a legal wife. She had also been betrothed to a nawab long ago, but the Nizam abruptly canceled the wedding when he was warned by a passing holy man that he would not long survive her marriage. Shahazadi Pasha, now a 40-year-old spinster, often used to drive around Hyderabad with her father in one or another of the old cars he thriftily uses, but she is seldom seen any more.