After the Partition, my father's family, Hindu Punjabis from Lahore, came to live in Darya Ganj. Nearby was a Sikh family that had come from Sargoda. One of their sons, took to sending roses via his kid brother to my aunt as she waited at the bus stop. So it happened, that I grew up with Sikh cousins, accompanying them to kirtan in the cool, quiet whiteness of the gurudwara, chasing second helpings of khada prasad accepting that my female cousin would not cut her hair while we brandished bangs, noting my male cousins graduating from patkas to pags, as from short pants to long.

Summer holidays meant night-spends at their house. In the morning I would watch fascinated, my aunt help my uncle tie his pagdi, or as they called it, 'pag'. Two people across a room coming closer, as they folded the long muslin cloth sharp and tight, layering pleats like the delicate demarcations of a pateesa, into a geometrically elegant turban. I learned to identify that people wore their turbans differently, perhaps revealing their personalities: some precise and firm, others sloppy and lumpy, some in muted colours, others in flamboyant prints. I laughed along to jokes about this.