NEW DELHI: Mir Dilawar Ali Khan, whose forefathers were noblemen in the Court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, pulls a ricl(shaw through the crooked streets of Hyderabad these nights. `He worl(s at night,` a friend said, `because he`s ashamed to show his face in the day.

Mir Dilawar Ali Khan is one of the 1,046 `Sahibzadas` (children of the master), impoverished relatives of the Nizam, who are demanding larger allowances from the former ruler, one of the world`s richest men.

Two Sahibzadas, who went on a hunger strike last month to reinforce their demands, gave up the strike a few days ago after an official promised to intercede on their behalf with the Nizam.

However, leaders of the Association of Sahibzadas interviewed here said they had little hope that their demands would even reach the ears of the aging ruler who never leaves his palace.

`The courtiers just won`t tell him how we are suffering,` said Mir Mohammad Ali Khan Kaleem, who is the Association`s President. `But now [they] have built an iron curtain around him and we can`t even get an interview. So we, who were once the cream of Hyderabad`s society, must now pull rickshaws, work as waiters in hotels, run pan (betel nut) stalls and other shops,` he said.

The Sahibzadas are particularly angry at this state of affairs because of its striking contrast with the lot of the `adopted children` of the Nizam.

Curiously, the Nizam has long lived a remarkably Spartan existence. Those few persons, who have seen him behind the palace walls, say he spends much of the day on a simple cot, sewing his own socks, writing odes in Persian and brooding over a prediction made at the time of the first Nizam, Nizam Asif Jah, in the 18th century that `your dynasty will rule for seven generations`.

The Nizam is the seventh.-Agencies