India, Sept. 10 -- The drawing room is dense with carpets, wooden cabinets and a pendulum clock. Black-and-white portraits of men in topis hang high on the walls. The presence of a window AC fails to disturb the room's older air. And on the striped sofa, he is sitting with an arm along the backrest. He has short white hair, a grey-white goatee and distant eyes. He is speaking softly and unhurriedly, with light pride but without arrogance, while talking of his family and its Old Delhi past.

This was an afternoon scene in the upper-floor drawing room of Haveli Sharif Manzil, the 300-year-old family mansion in the Walled City's congested Ballimaran neighbourhood. Its patriarch, the aforementioned Hakim Masroor Ahmed Khan, died early Wednesd...