The great halls are divided with sitting places suited to a person’s stature. The uppermost corner, which has a leopard skin over the seat, is for the shah nashin or head of the house while the worosi (wooden partition) divides the hall into three sitting areas. Even the artefacts are intact. There is the charka, the samawar, old pottery, silver ware and bedsheets with intricate needlework.

An adjacent room has photographs of those who lived here once. Syed Iftikhar’s father Agha Sayed Mohammad was the first parliamentarian from Kashmir and was part of India’s first parliament in 1952 — a picture shows Mohammad seated in the same row as Pandit Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, Shastri and Abul Kalam Azad. Syed’s grandfather Agha Syed Hussain Shah, a prominent figure in the history of Kashmir, joined hands with the National Conference founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1931. There is also a photograph of Jinnah and Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah who had come visiting. Agha Syed Hussain was the last to have lived in the house.

A former managing director of the Tourism Development Corporation, the 65-year-old Syed Iftikhar has memories of his grandfather holding meetings in the Diwan-e-Aam. “The ladies used to live in an adjacent house which is no longer there,” he recalls.

Syed, who trace his ancestors to merchants in Iran’s Sabazwar, doesn’t know who built the house. “All I know is that during one rioting near Madin Saheb, all our property was gutted so we had to shift to this place. Must be at least 250 to 300 years back; I think I am the seventh generation to inherit the house,’’ he adds.

... contd.