Bringing Back the King from Exile
Wajid Ali Shah, the last nawab of Awadh would have turned 200 in 2022. But it’s only this year that the Sibtainabad Imambara where he was laid to rest, in Kolkata’s Metiabruz neighbourhood is receiving the attention it deserves. Built in the 1860s, the West Bengal government has decided to undertake restoration of the shrine with a budget of over Rs 4 crore.
However, its disintegrating walls did not deter Kolkata artist Soumyadeep Roy from hosting a tribute for the art-loving ruler on the Imambara’s premises. Titled Dastan-e-Akhtar, the two-day event regaled visitors with stories of the king through an exhibition, talks and a heritage walk—all organised by Roy—across the neighbourhood that came to be known as “mini-Lucknow”.
A student of literature trained in Hindustani classical music from the age of seven, Roy never planned to be an artist. As a proponent of dhrupad, he was not institutionally encouraged to listen to khayal or thumri, which the last nawab of Awadh patronised and practiced. However, in 2009, Roy discontinued his formal training and allowed himself to explore the-forbidden world of music over late-night FM radio. “I heard the likes of Begum Akhtar, Rasoolan Bai, Shamim Bai, which is how I got hooked on to the idea of Lucknow,” or the “first road to Wajid Ali Shah”, as he puts it.
In 2012, Roy began researching Kolkata’s urban history and how various groups came to constitute it. He chanced on the beguiling legacy of Metiabruz, where Shah sought exile after being ousted from Awadh in 1856. “It was a city that was very consciously recreated.
In fact, the nawab’s elaborate dance dramas, or rahas, in which he himself performed, already had the theme of a city within a city—something like Metiabruz,” Roy says, as he pieced together an image of the nawab through the people living in the city-within-a-city he built. He went on to bring Wajid Ali Shah to life through his minimalist line illustrations congruent with the siyaqalam tradition of drawing in Awadh.
At the Imambara exhibition, Roy displayed not only a whole series of such miniature illustrations depicting Shah and his life and times, but also an audacious 18X4 feet scroll, entirely hand-painted. “The exhibition was a tribute to the three kingdoms he built—in Lucknow, Calcutta, and finally through his art,” says Roy.
There was also Shah’s prolific menagerie in Awadh, whose animals, along with his chefs and nautch girls, travelled all the way to Calcutta with him—like a travelling circus, if you will. Roy dedicated an entire section of his exhibition to tales from the menagerie with archival documents and photographs by 19th-century German photographer Fritz Kapp, on loan from Shah’s great great-grandchildren Talat Fatima, Manzilat Fatima and Kamran Meerza. “One of his giraffes came all the way to Calcutta from Lucknow. Then he found another one, to train them to pull his carriage, for which he went looking for a trainer,” Roy laughs.
Roy’s wishlist has now expanded, and includes a travelling exhibition—a befitting homage to the gypsy king—which he can take across the borders to Bangladesh, maybe even Pakistan. He’s writing a book on Shah’s three kingdoms. “There is so much to Wajid Ali Shah beyond just the biryani and the colonial propaganda that maligned him as an incapable administrator,” he says. In spite of colonial spite, Shah’s legacy lives on.