The Crust of the Seventh Loaf
In a forest in Hyderabad nearly three centuries ago (so the story goes), a prince met a holy man begging bread. Stricken to the heart by his plight, the prince gave the beggar seven loaves of fine bread. In gratitude, the holy man put his blessing on the prince's family for seven generations, one for each loaf. In the years that followed the prince's descendants, the Ni-zams of the princely state of Hyderabad, became the richest lords of all, in an India laden with rich potentates. Even the humbler men who declared India an independent republic in 1950 were loth to impose their democratic ways too swiftly on the 562 potentates who ruled their nation's princely states in unmatched autocratic panoply.
Today, however, as the miserly old seventh Nizam of Hyderabad approaches his 71st birthday, the blessings of the beggar in the forest have run out, not only for the Nizam's family, but for those of all the once-great princes of India. They are shorn of their royal power, and by the end of this month, when India will officially realign its states, their last royal vestiges, excepting their personal wealth, will disappear. Last week, as the day approached, royal princes by the score journeyed into the palmed city of Mysore in custom-built Cadillacs, svelte Jaguars and private trains for a final royal fling. The occasion was the final Dashahara durbar of the fat (300 Ibs.), rich, able, music-loving Maharaja of Mysore, who has ruled his state as rajpramukh since the coming of the republic.
Elephants in the Hall. Combining in some measure the functions of a prince and a governor, with salaries ranging up to $120,000 a year, the title rajpramukh was bestowed by the republic on seven of the most powerful princes (along with allowances ranging upward to $1,000,000) as a sop to their pride. But even that comes to an end with the realignment of states. As a mere governor, poking along on his privy purse ($520,000) and an annual salary of $13,000, the maharaja would be able to throw no more parties like this. All through the elaborate, ten-day ceremony that marked the twilight of his greatness, farmers and shopkeepers by the thousand poured into the city from every corner of his old realm, standing in patient lines to glimpse his stables of thoroughbreds, his gold-and-silver coaches, the Daimlers, Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces in his garages. At the great final display in his red-carpeted durbar hall, some 30,000 of them gathered before the shedlike structure, as big as a football field, to see the prince himself.
Huge and amiable, the former autocrat puffed up the gold-and-silver ladder to his jewel-encrusted throne, and just as the royal backside touched the gold-brocaded pillow waiting to receive it, thousands upon thousands of lights blazed up all over the city. Elephants with gilded toenails lumbered past the prince. Indian regimentals struggled bravely to keep their Scottish bagpipes skirling, while acrobats wheeled and tumbled. One by one Mysore's distinguished citizens approached the throne holding an offering of gold, and the maharaja, his diamond earrings ajangle, tapped the proffered coin to show that he accepted it, but only symbolically.
All in all, it was a lavish show to signify the end of a lavish era, and the maharaja made it clear throughout that there would not be another like it. In the future, the expenditure of rupees in Mysore will be carefully watched. The maharaja has decreed a tax of 16 This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.