Even as his rule crumbled the Nizam’s eccentricities were legion: the fleet of Rolls-Royces he employed to collect rubbish from Hyderabad’s streets; the eunuchs that guarded his mighty jewellery collection; and above all the intricate complexities of his love life, with its dozens of concubines and countless illegitimate children. ‘The last Nizam had a total of 14,718 employees when he died,’ according to one account. ‘In his main palace alone, there were about 3,000 Arab bodyguards, 28 people paid to fetch drinking water, 38 to dust chandeliers, [and] several specifically to grind walnuts.’32
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