Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Aletta Andre & Abhimanyu Kumar about their book 'The House of Awadh',  longlisted for The Wise Owl Literary Awards 2026.

Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Abhimanyu Kumar and Aletta Andre about their book ‘The House of Awadh’ which was longlisted for The Wise Owl Literary awards 2026 in the Non-Fiction segment

 

Thank you Aletta and Abhimanyu for talking with The Wise Owl.

 

RS: Malcha Mahal stands at the edge of Delhi’s Ridge Forest—physically and metaphorically removed from the city. In telling the story of Begum Wilayat Mahal and her children, how did this geography of isolation shape your understanding of exile, entitlement, and abandonment in post-Partition India?

 

AK & AA: Their choice of home was one of the reasons we took up this story. Malcha Mahal is in the very centre of India’s capital, but while they lived there it was unreachable and almost invisible, apart from the sign boards warning against trespassing they had placed. Wilayat, while she was alive, never left the place and Sakina didn’t either; Ali Raza did but not often. They were very selective in who they allowed to enter and who they would speak to, as well, and the stories that came out of that were always about a family of outsiders. The fact that they were considered outsiders, figuratively, but had also located themselves at the edge of society, quite literally, was an appealing analogy to us, and it raised so many questions too. Only after our research we realised how very fitting this geography of isolation, as you aptly describe it, was. Indeed, Wilayat was in exile from her past, from her potential, from a new future that in her case never materialised, from multiple identities that were denied to her. She is one example of people that had high hopes and ambitions, but ultimately fell through the cracks of post-Partition nation building in both Pakistan and India. 

RS: The book resists the easy label of “imposture” often attached to Wilayat Mahal, choosing instead to read her contradictions through the lens of trauma—personal, historical, and collective. As historians and journalists, how did you negotiate the ethical line between scepticism and empathy while reconstructing her life?

 

AK &AA: Wilayat was different, and we empathised with that as a starting point. It is easy to point fingers at someone who is different, to ridicule, to accuse, or to judge purely in terms of mainstream values. It is harder to try to understand where someone who acts and thinks differently is coming from. That takes empathy, and we chose to let that be our main guide. Of course, this does not mean that we took everything she said and claimed as facts. As journalists, we do have a healthy dose of scepticism, and some of her claims and statements were pretty impossible to rhyme with other facts. But we applied this scepticism to other sources as well, such as newspaper reports and claims made by people in power. For example, the fact that the newspapers of 1954 reported Wilayat to be a ‘lunatic’, does not mean that she was mentally unsound. There is a context, which we also applied to come to an understanding of what may have happened at the time.

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Imposture implies that she deceived others on purpose, so we also wondered what purpose that would have been? Considering that the results of her actions were to live in a totally dilapidated building, being widely ridiculed and to have likely died from suicide, we believe that imposture would be too simple of a conclusion. We felt that she deserved empathy, and we tried to show this by taking her story seriously, including all its gaps and faults; they are part of the story too.

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RS: Structured around Memory, History, and Identity, the narrative mirrors the fragmented nature of the story itself. Did this architecture emerge organically from your research, or was it a conscious attempt to impose order on a past shaped by rupture, loss, and bureaucratic erasure?

 

AK & AA: Every book needs a structure, but very early in our research it was clear to us that a standard chronological order did not suit this story. So we thought of an alternative, and Memory, History and Identity is what we came up with when we wrote the proposal and initial chapter outline. We had to add more chapters and turn them around a bit once we had done more research and started writing, but the structure around these three themes stood strong.

 

We see them also as layers of a surface. Memory comes first - it is what you find when you start scratching the surface of the story and start talking with those who remember the family from 1975 onwards, the year they arrived in Delhi. They spent time at the New Delhi Railway Station, in Lucknow and in Malcha Mahal. There is memory in all those locations, with people who remain there, in related documents.

 

Then comes history - the history of Awadh, to be precise. As this history was such an integral part of the story that Wilayat was telling the world after she arrived in Delhi and the identity she adopted, we decided to incorporate it, regardless of whether it was possible to prove her claims of lineage to the royal family of Awadh. History, in addition to memory, shapes identity - and as figures such as Warren Hastings, Begum Hazrat Mahal and King Wajid Ali Shah show, it is very much open to interpretation.

 

For identity, finally, you have to dig much deeper into the surface, to find the personal history and trauma that lay beneath the public persona. So we had to go further in history, where it became harder to find living sources, though not impossible, and Wilayat’s story became more interwoven with the story of Partition and Kashmir. This portion was naturally the hardest. We came across many dead ends, potential sources that had júst died, records that were incomplete. But it also resulted in the biggest surprises of our research, especially in Kashmir and Lahore, where we found unique sources who knew them.

RS:  Much of The House of Awadh unfolds in the space between documentation and disbelief—between what the archives record and what Wilayat Mahal insisted was true. As researchers who spent years navigating sealed files, reluctant officials, and fading memories, how did your own understanding of “truth” evolve, and did the process ever compel you to rethink whose versions of history the state chooses to legitimise?

 

AK & AA: Definitely, but not just because of our research. We can see in real time how politicians try to control history, rewrite text books, change who gets honoured by street names, and decide which monument is more worthy of renovation. We saw these present day developments in light of how Wilayat was treated, too. 

 

It is well known that the voices of relatively powerless - like women and marginalised communities -  get overshadowed in real time, let alone when after a few decades only so-called official sources are left. The government archives and newspaper stories can help compile a certain narrative, but never the full story. That’s why we took the book written by Wilayat’s daughter Sakina very seriously as a source, for example, while taking certain official reports with a pinch of salt. We also noted the clear discrepancy between how Wilayat was remembered by those in power versus common people, such as former neighbours and servants, and decided not to value the former as more legitimate than the latter. 

 

So we have learned the truth to be fragmented, especially if you search for it in different decades. As researchers, you try to analyse as many sources as possible to come as close as possible to the truth. The truth is compiled by both official sources and the memories of common people, and both are valuable, while neither is objective. The research has taught us that it’s important to keep an open mind to unexpected outcomes, and also that it’s important to let go of dead ends. Or at least, unresponsive ends - they might open in the future. We are left with plenty of unanswered questions. So we don’t want to claim our book to be the definite history of Begum Wilayat Mahal, as any narrative can only at best be a version of the truth.

 

RS:  In the epilogue, your invocation of Prof. Akhtar subtly shifts the book from documentation to reflection. After years of archives, interviews, and travel across Delhi, Lucknow, Kashmir, Karachi, and Lahore, what does The House of Awadh ultimately suggest about the cost of clinging to lineage and memory in a post-colonial world that has little patience for either?

 

AK & AA: You are right that memory can be a huge burden on anyone, and especially when an entire subcontinent is trying to deal with the trauma of partition. With nation building comes a very clear and defined narrative of the past, and if your memories don’t fit in that narrative, you can either forget and adjust, or remember and struggle. We learned that memories, in their coloured and faded way, can form a truth that does not fit the mainstream truth, but still makes a lot of sense to the individual. That’s why we resisted the conclusion, made by some, that Wilayat lied about who she was. Prof. Akhtar provided us with his insights on truth and lies, and how thin the line between them can be.

 

Regarding lineage, it depends on what lineage you claim and in what way. Those who have emphasised their royal lineage in post-Independence India for commercial and tourism purposes have flourished. Wilayat claimed her lineage to Begum Hazrat Mahal, to talk about the historical injustice that was done to Awadh by the British, and not, as she but also other claimants to the House of Awadh argue, acknowledged or corrected but the government of independent India. We don’t want to argue that Wilayat had the personal right to the royal palaces that she demanded. But for a debate on the historical injustice done to Awadh or the lack of respect for and maintenance of monuments of erstwhile Awadh was indeed little patience. 

 

But for Wilayat, we wonder if we can speak of the ‘cost’ of holding onto this lineage. Wilayat had already lost a lot before she introduced Begum Wilayat Mahal to Delhi, and Lucknow. She had lost her husband, a son, her home in Lucknow, her respect and dignity in Karachi’s political society, her old friends in Kashmir. Perhaps to the cost of ultimately losing a part of herself, we think that holding on to her royal identity was Wilayat’s way of coping with all that loss.

 

RS: What next?

 

AK & AA: We are actually both working on novels right now. Another non-fiction rooted in history is also in the works, but it's too soon to go into much detail.

 

Thank you Abhimanyu and Aletta for taking time out to respond to talk with The Wise Owl. We wish you the very best in all your creative and literary endeavours.