New Delhi, Feb. 27 -- One day, in 1975, the first-class waiting room of the New Delhi Railway Station became home to a woman, her three children, a posse of servants, a pack of dogs - and curious reporters, photographers and onlookers showed up with questions.
RV Smith, the raconteur of Delhi, who had died in 2020, had summed it up best, "I remember that in the late 1970s, a strange sight greeted us at New Delhi Railway Station - a gaunt middle-aged woman standing at platform No. 1 arms akimbo. Trains came and went but she continued to stay unperturbed by the sick hurry of life."
The woman was Begum Wilayat Mahal, who claimed to be the descendant of Nawab Wajid Ali of Awadh and had squatted at the railway station for almost a decade befor...