Welcome to Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I Heart Radio and

Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these

amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of New Delhi for decades, a crumbling mansion in a dark forest, a birthright that had been stolen, a queen with no kingdom.

It might sound like something out of a Victorian novel, but for 50 years the last rulers of

Avid lived out their own gothic tragedy right in the center of the Indian capital.

The whole affair began in the early 1970s when a regally dressed woman and her two adult children

arrived at the New Delhi train station.

The three quickly took over the lobby.

Fine woven carpets, potted palms,

Nepalese servants in twin outfits, even a pack of massive

great Danes marked their corner of the station.

After the woman had finally settled in, she called over the Shocks Station Master.

She had a message for him.

He was now standing in the presence of Willyat,

the bagum of the stolen kingdom of Avid.

These were her children, Prince Cyrus and Princess Sakina, and they would not move

until their kingdom was returned to them.

To understand the bagum's demands, you'd have to look back over a hundred years. Before British colonization, much of

modern-day India was made up of either the Mughal Empire or independent states.

Avid was a kingdom in the north, ruled by a noble Muslim family until the British took it in the 1850s.

Walyet claimed that this was her family, and she was the ruler of Avid,

...