“Nizam Mir Barkat Ali Khan Siddiqi Mukarram Jah, Asaf Jah VIII or simply Prince Mukarram Jah Bahadur was really an exceptional person, my special brother. At his best he had a very sharp mind, an exceptional memory and the powers of concentration.
“We were at a social function, possibly a dinner at a marriage with musicians playing and people dinning at their tables and others dancing on the floor. It was crowded and noisy. Seated at our table my special brother reached into a pocket inside his jacket, took out a bunch of plain foolscap paper and started writing. He hardly took time to pause and think, and with total concentration filled several sheets completely undistracted by the hubbub around us.
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“When he had finished and put the papers away I asked my special brother what he had been writing; he said: It was a report I had to compile, and it has to be in tomorrow. When I asked him how he wrote the report without notes or back-up papers, he just tapped the side of his head, meaning all he needed was in his memory.
“My brother was the second best extemporary speaker I ever heard, and I have had listened to many off the cuff speeches in my time, and by the best of them, from Pandit ji and Mrs. Gandhi downwards. He would sometimes take a pre-prepared speech to a function, but he often set it aside and talked from the heart, winning the rapt attention and the appreciation of his audience.
“More often my brother spoke without any prepared speech and he enjoyed it, and so did the listeners. I was sitting next to him on the podium once and while an earlier speaker was ploughing through his material, my brother seemed to pick up on something just said and lent towards me and asked: what is a good word for citizen in Urdu, and I said, ‘shehri’.
“When he was asked to address the gathering my brother stood and delivered a ringing speech, totally off the cuff, on the rights of a shehri and his obligations and duties responsibilities that got a standing cheer when he finished.
“So who was the best extemporary speaker I ever heard? Our grandfather. But he and my brother were both exceptional.
“My brother was also an exceptional engineer. He could and did build vehicles entirely from the drawings/diagrams in his head. He could fix any machine and get it working better than before. However, his was a gift to be exercised as a one-off each time…it had to be something new he created or a new, difficult mechanical problem that he would solve. It did not interest him to put his gift to work in a systematic manufacturing way or on commercial lines.
“And my brother was an exceptional gymnast. We see the young people now-a-days on the television doing those fantastic leaps and turns and summersaults at the Olympics; well I saw it all seventy years ago being performed just as well by my special brother.
“At school he was the captain of the gym team as he was at Cambridge University, getting a half blue for it. Only a half, as athletics was then considered a minor sport.
“After Cambridge my special brother attended Sandhurst, the British military academy, and graduated with honours and was offered a commission in the Royal Engineers of the British Army. He did not accept that and returned to Hyderabad as our grandfather wanted him at home.
“But then Pandit ji wanted him in New Delhi, and kept him as a guest in his own home for months and took him with him to functions and other events. He wanted to groom my brother and wanted the country to benefit from his services. Pandit ji suggested to my special brother that he should start by joining the Indian Foreign Service, hinting that he would soon be invited to take the post of an Ambassador in a suitable country.
“I am not sure why that offer did not get taken up. I think our grandfather, again, said that my brother should stay close to home. By then my grandfather must have been feeling his age, and wished my brother to be prepared for future responsibilities in Hyderabad.
“If my brother inherited the gift of making extemporary speeches from our grandfather, he must have inherited his gift of making people laugh from our father. They both had the gift of making people double up with laughter and of telling humorous anecdotes as only the exceptionally gifted story tellers could.
“They could make you laugh till the tears rolled down your cheeks.
“Now again, tears, but for
My special brother.
May God grant him eternal peace.”
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