Pitaji’s luck soared. He bought the house where we had been living as tenants until then. Such fortune also stirred up other fancies; Gul and I had our hearts set on biking. When we begged Pitaji to buy us a bicycle, he said, “Practice on a rented bike first. I’ll buy you a new one when you’re ready.” Our choice of instructor was obvious—we went to his younger brother, our Juggi Chacha. But Juggi Chacha categorically refused to teach us. “Girls riding bicycles are an open invitation to roadside Romeos,” he admonished.   

We were furious. Gul retorted, “All my girlfriends ride bicycles. None of their elders, even the grumpiest grandparents, think it’s a bad thing. You keep saying you aren’t just our uncle, you’re more like a brother, but you’re worse than an old man!”

“Old men don’t know anything about these Romeos,” he argued.

“And you are an expert?” Gul retorted.

Juggi Chacha did not take the slightest offense. He just laughed. His laughter was like his singing: loud and heavy, the heroic voice of Babruvahana, the Mahabharata’s mighty warrior. Then he repeated one of his silly catchphrases: “Why worry, dear, I’m here!”

“And what will you do?”

“Just wait and see.”

He bought a top-notch 350cc Norton motorcycle, and ferried Gul and me around Delhi, one at a time.

One time, he took both of us together. Juggi Chacha in the front; Gul, wearing a baggy, billowing gharara, in the back; and me, woefully sandwiched in between. I wore a skirt and blouse, which meant that I could be stuffed into the smallest of spaces. The gharara was a majestic Mughal garment, ruched at the knee and flaring out at the bottom. There was no point in wearing it if it didn’t flutter in the wind. I understood only later why Juggi Chacha did not have a problem with my outfit: It was not “sexy,” so I was of no interest to the “Romeos.”

Gul’s silky, delicately stitched gharara looked so gorgeous, she swooned at her own reflection. To look fashionable, one had to fan the gharara out to its full reach when sitting down. Both Gul and I knew that she was as glamorous as Saira Banu to the young men on the streets, who sighed amorously as we passed by. Juggi Chacha had learned to drive a motorcycle only recently. That’s why all his attention was focused on driving; otherwise, a few of those Romeos would have seen where their ogling got them. 

But a different interruption lay in store for us. One end of the billowing gharara got stuck in the rear wheel and began to pull away from Gul’s body, spinning round like a spool. Thankfully, there were many folds in the fabric. Chacha was going slowly, an utter waste of all the features of his fancy motorcycle. Despite that, the gharara couldn’t hold up for long and finally ripped. The wheel that had been gripping Gul by the gharara suddenly threw her to the ground like a severed kite.

Juggi Chacha erupted. “What did I tell you? You don’t even know how to sit on a motorcycle, how on earth will you ride a bicycle?”

At the sight of Gul sprawled face-down on the ground, I burst into tears.

“Be quiet, crybaby,” he scolded me. “She’s the one who fell, why are you crying?”

“Gul is dead! Gul is dead!” I began to cry even louder.

Before Juggi Chacha could stoop down to help her, Gul got up herself, screaming, “You idiot! This motorcycle is the devil’s machine. It destroyed my new gharara!”

“Your face is scratched, too,” I said.

Gul began to cry profusely when she heard this. “What will become of me now?” she asked.

“It’s just a scratch. Not a disaster!” Juggi Chacha declared.

“You ruined my face. I’ll tell Babaji, he’s your father, you’ll get a real scolding. He’ll say, she needs to be married off, how will we find her a nice groom with a scar on her face?”

“Are you crazy? Leave Babaji out of it! And don’t say anything to your Pitaji, either. Come on, I’ll take you to Haqim Kallan Khan, he lives nearby. He’ll give you a salve so good it’ll make you as fair as your mother.”

“Really! Then why didn’t you take us earlier, uncle dear!” I remarked bitterly.

“Who’s the crazy one here? How will I go anywhere in this torn gharara?” Gul wailed.

“Oh God,” cried Juggi Chacha, sinking down with his head in his hands.

Back then the shops in the market didn’t sell ready-made clothes, and certainly not ghararas. The only ready-made thing you could buy was a sari. Chacha proposed a plan. He would buy a sari, and Gul would drape it over her kurti and gharara, covering herself properly. But Gul wasn’t ready to run around looking like a clown, despite the circumstances.

“Here, on the street?” she asked in horror.

Chacha clutched his head again.

I suggested this: Buy a sari, and one of those huge men’s raincoats. Hide Gul in the raincoat and take her to Haqim Kallan Khan’s house. Gul could drape the sari at his place, get her scratches dressed, and head home in the raincoat, shielded and anonymous.

As a reward for my ingenious plan, Gul slapped me. But Juggi Chacha praised my shrewdness, and Gul gave in slowly, reluctantly. She acted like she had no choice, but I knew what she was thinking. What if Haqim Kallan Khan really had a salve that could make her complexion fair like Maa’s! We bought the sari to use it later, but it was not of much use.

When Gul arrived at Haqim’s house wrapped from head to toe in a manly raincoat, he gazed at her quizzically. She answered his gaze with a doleful stare that seemed to say, I will eat you alive. He must have thought, This strange girl in her strange clothes is possessed. They’re here for an exorcism. Chacha told Haqim the whole story, but the poor man was so cowed by Gul’s terrifying glare that he couldn’t even laugh at our comical adventure. He went inside and returned with his daughter. The daughter solved our problems in a second. She said, “Nothing to worry about. Take the little girl home in my burqa; their Juggi Chacha can bring it back later. If someone at home asks too many questions, say that she is playing Anarkali, the Mughal courtesan, in a college drama, and just came back from rehearsals.”

We leaped in delight. “Such quick-thinking!” Juggi Chacha exclaimed. “This is why Razia Sultan, the empress, became a sultan in the first place. You are her spitting image.”

The daughter gave us another taste of Razia-style acumen. “When you return the burqa, bring the gharara. I’ll mend it with a rafu stitch and cover it with a patch of beautiful embroidery!” Had her father not been sitting there, Chacha would’ve kissed her hands. But he feared being beaten, so we kissed her hands for him.

For the first time, we understood the quiet glory of the burqa. Such a godly invention. A garment, of course, but also a dream for purposes of hiding. While Gul was Saira Banu in the gharara, when she covered herself in a burqa she became Anarkali. On top of that, Haqim Kallan Khan had given her his miraculous salve. She sat proudly on the motorcycle, taking up more space than ever before, and I shrank into the middle. We could finally go back home now.

Gul and I came in through the back door and ran straight to the store-room at the rear of the house. No one saw us except Parbati. She gasped as soon as she laid eyes on us, calming down only after we spun elaborate lies about the Anarkali role. But then the burqa came off and her hasty interrogation began We clasped our hands over her mouth and begged her to keep quiet for the sake of our mother’s weak heart. The story we told her involved the motorcycle ramming into a tree and ended with a warning not to gossip.

Unfortunately, Gul’s complexion did not grow fairer. But the scratches disappeared and left no marks on her face. We did gain one useful thing from the accident: the perfect ammunition to keep Juggi Chacha in our power. Whenever we wanted something, we could threaten to tell Babaji about how Chacha had endangered our marriages. Our Chacha, the motorcycle man, would turn into the meekest lamb.