Overview

This is a remarkably honest and unabashed account of a life that begins during the fading days of the wealthiest of India's princely states. Bilquis Jehan was born in 1930 into a family with ties to the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad and enjoyed the privilege and luxury of a way of life that no longer exists. Her tale takes us through her childhood and her marriage at the age of 16, just at the birth of modern India and Pakistan. Her new life in Pakistan as the wife of an executive (himself half-European), working for a multi-national corporation, is recounted with insight and delight. She and her family join the cosmopolitan world of the elite in what is now the mega-city of Karachi, travels and experiences the world, far beyond what her own childhood would have predicted. Through all the changes she preserves her heritage in her own way, transmitting it through her books, Mughal Cuisine and Khush Ziaka, of Mughal and Hyderabadi cuisine. This is also a personal account of her spiritual journey based on the Sufi teachings of her pir and her father of the Chishtiya and Qadria silsilas in India. She opens a window onto a life that incorporates both modernity and religion, in contrast to the increasingly strident and politicized Islam that has gained a foothold in Pakistan. Bilquis Jehan's life mirrors the monumental changes in her time through the quotidian. Her life is described in these pages with candour, and an abiding love for the world she left behind and the new world she grew to love.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bilquis Jehan Khan
Publisher:   OUP Pakistan
Imprint:   OUP Pakistan
Dimensions:   Width: 14.70cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 22.80cm
Weight:   0.486kg
ISBN:  

9780195473490

ISBN 10:   0195473493
Pages:   290
Publication Date:   13 January 2011
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Out of stock  

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ; FAMILY TREE ; INTRODUCTION ; PART I: HYDERABAD ; 1. The Bird of Gold ; 2. My Family History ; 3. A Second Set of Parents ; 4. Nasir Manzil, the Family Home ; 5. A Little Girl in a Big Mansion ; 6. A Grand Wedding ; 7. How to Run a Palace ; 8. The Jagir that Supported Us ; 9. Mangoes and Corn ; 10. My First Fast and Eid ; 11. Mairaj Apa Intercedes ; 12. A Collector of Clocks and Walking Sticks ; 13. Life at Court ; 14. The Old Ways ; 15. Hyderabadi Weddings ; 16. Womanhood and Engagements ; 17. Wed at Sixteen ; 18. A Mixed Marriage ; 19. Early Married Life ; 20. My Unusual Father ; 21. A Holy Man's Life and Works ; 22. Finding My Path and My Father's Death ; 23. Farewell to Hyderabad ; PART II: ONWARDS ; 24. Nayyar, a Pakistani Baby ; 25. Lahore, London, and Dacca ; 26. New Ways of Bringing up Children ; 27. An American Journey ; 28. London Again ; 29. Back to a War ; 30. Haj ; 31. Nayyar's Marriage ; 32. An Illness, and Hasan's Return ; 33. Two Years of Anxiety ; 34. Hasan's Wedding in Washington D.C. ; 35. Mummy's Death ; 36. Life in Modern Kuwait ; 37. Cooking Up Mughal Cuisine ; 38. Singapore, and Hyderabad Revisited ; POSTSCRIPT ; PEOPLE IN THIS BOOK ; GLOSSARY

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Author Information

Born in 1930 in Hyderabad Deccan, India, Bilquis Jehan is the author of two cookbooks in Urdu, Khush Zaiqa (1971), for which she was awarded a Bronze Medal at the book fair in Leipzig. It was revised and reissued as Naya Khush Zaiqa (1990). Her second book Mughal Cuisine (1982) was published in Malaysia. She has travelled widely and established a vocational school for poor girls in Karachi, which she continues to supervise.

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