It was a bit chilly this morning in Old Delhi. Last night was still quite warm when we went to bed, so the window was wide open. I imagine it got its coldest around 4 AM, but now, at 6:30, I had to pee and that's what woke me up enough to be aware of it. I still had my personal body warmer, Aafreen, but my comforter had gone back into the garage's box and was sitting in its summer home in the attic somewhere.

Thanks to global warming, I'd been able to get by for most of the week in the Delhi winter but last night had gotten a bit cooler than the last few.

We'd had a few weeks of global cooling a month or two ago and our oranges would be three or four times as much this year.

Today was Eid. The one day of the year we got to see Saleem Chacha. Because Saleem Chacha was from Pakistani Punjab. And we were his celebration, and had been, as long as I can remember.

I think Mom's Grandmother was born in Sind. It was always said that she's the one I got the reddish tint in my hair from. Saleem Chacha got the full inheritance. His head was covered with fiery white and his fair skin was almost hidden behind freckles. He was over six feet tall and could eat like a cow and never gain an ounce. His body was still thin as a rail, like an adolescent boy who's just gone through his first growth spurt. If Saleem Chacha was an animal, he'd be a giraffe.

I'm sure he saw his fair share of giraffes. Saleem Chacha was a veterinarian par excellence. His specialty was fixing up exotic animals with rare diseases. He worked for some animal conservation group and was always flying to Africa or Borneo or somewhere else exotic. He always joked that it was OK for a lion to eat a gnu, but let one stub his toe and he'd be off on the next plane. And let some native or hunter be involved with it and they'd take a whole planeload of conservationists over.

Saleem Chacha was Mom's baby brother, and she always looked after him like a mother hen each Eid when he came to visit us, clucking about how thin he was, forcing food down his throat at every opportunity. It was the one day of the year the animals had to survive by themselves so he could spend the day with us. I guess most would consider him an eligible bachelor. He had a job, some money in the bank and no wives — past or present.

He always brought presents for me and Nadimah with a Punjabi theme. When I was around four, he gave me a stuffed Bear named Paddy. Paddy had a green ribbon around his neck and had a place of honour on my top shelf. Most years since then, it had been a button. Paddy was covered with them, everything from "Kiss Me, I'm Punjabi" to a huge Khalsa symbol. Oh, and his head was covered by a green beanie that I'd felt like a fool wearing last year when he gave it to me. Because I had to wear each present for the rest of the day or he'd be heartbroken.

Mom and Dad had already gone to Delhi airport to pick him up. There was a pancake house near the airport that served green pancake syrup every Eid, and they'd made it a point to have breakfast on the way back from the airport every year for the past ten. They took their time, and more likely than not, Mom and Dad would have to drag him away when he and someone else would start trading stories to prove how Punjabi they were. When they got home, Saleem Chacha would spend the rest of the day spinning tales of his adventures.

Of course, when Nadimah and I were younger, we believed every word of it. His encounters with unicorns, the pot of gold he almost had when the leprechaun just got away from him, the time he out-drank a whole village of Punjabi men, drinking desi whiskey by the bucket while they stuck to their green beer.

Evidently he was satisfied with the green beer these days. For the past few years, Dad whose ancestors were from Delhi would become an honorary Punjabi and the two of them would down pitcher after pitcher of the stuff as the rest of us drank green Coke at the pizza parlour around the corner. We spent a lot of quarters playing video games each year as Saleem Chacha and Dad sang their songs and made toasts to each of us and everyone else in the place. Around 10:00, Mom would drag my father, then my Chacha out to the car as they sang songs and waved to the crowd, then drive us all home and drag Dad into the bedroom and Saleem Chacha into the living room, where the couch was already made up for him to sleep it off. The next morning, it would be back to the pancake house where both of them would drink plenty of coffee and then Saleem Chacha would catch a plane around noon or 1:00, flying off to the next sick animal, not to be seen for another year. This year the following day was a Sunday, so I knew most of us would spend that day recovering.

We got up and got going and at 8:30, Umran and Ghalib came over. The three of us made breakfast as our men sat at the table. We had chappatis, bacon and sausage. I took care of the chappatis while Aafreen cooked the meat. Nadimah dumped a whole bag of M&Ms in a bowl and was picking out the green ones, poking a few of them into each cooked pancake before putting them on the table. We figured that would have to do since we didn't have any green syrup. Ghalib did try to make some green orange juice, but the combination of green food colouring and orange juice created a bluish, blackish purple.

Nadimah had turned domestic since she and Umran became a couple, something I never thought I'd live to see. She wasn't any great, but she was working on it. It was all new to her and Umran, and he was grateful for anything she did to show she cared for him. They were both final year students at JNU but were discovering each other and themselves like they were still teenagers. I never thought I'd say this about my sister, but she was cute, the way she was discovering being in love.

Umran had never had a girl look at him before, much less spend time with him. I guess it was love at first sight the first time he laid eyes on Nadimah.

Nadimah had been so busy satisfying all the hunks in University that she hardly knew he existed. They both claimed it was fate that she'd been grounded and all the hunks were doing the party thing last Diwali when she called him as a last resort. Ghalib and I had both done our share of prodding to get either of them to do what each of them wanted but was too shy to ask for. My most recent act was to convince Umran to take her down from the pedestal once in a while and put her on her back. That seemed to be working out just fine.

We all sat at the table, Ghalib and I practically on top of each other, as were Umran and Nadimah across from us. Aafreen was alone, her normal cheery self, but I wondered if it bothered her to be without someone of her own. She'd trained most of the guys in University not to ask her out, primarily as a defensive act when her mother's lover was still around.

Speaking of the asshole, he showed up in town a few weeks ago and was now in jail for skipping bail, awaiting trial for drugs. Aafreen 's mother finished her latest rehab and had been let out on her own recognizance until for her own trial for allowing her children to be in the drug dealing, drug using, putting out for Mom's boyfriend environment she'd put them through for the past few years. I guess she decided she wasn't interested in spending a few years in jail and disappeared. Nobody had seen her for the last month and we didn't expect to. Aafreen seemed more relieved than bothered when she took off.

Nadimah sniffed and Umran pulled her in a bit closer.

"What's the matter, Nadi?"

As long as I remember, anybody calling my sister "Nadi" was in for a fight. But "Nadi" had become Umran's pet name for her, just as Ghalib used "E" for me and "Double A" for Aafreen. You could practically see her purr each time he called her that. Mom and Dad thought it was cute and had no idea what it meant.

"It's just that you're the first guy who wants to be with me just to be with me."

The nickname had gotten a couple of snickers at University, but Umran had come down on the first few real hard, and most of the guys were behaving themselves, at least when Umran or Nadimah were around. Ghalib had told me privately that a lot of the guys were anxiously awaiting the day the Nadi was back in business. I didn't think that was going to happen now that my sister knew what she had been missing.

Umran wrapped both arms around her and pulled her face into his chest and said, "I can't imagine any guy who wouldn't want to just be with you."

It must have been the right thing to say because my sister just purred.

The front door opened and we heard my Chacha complaining that if the guy at the restaurant was Punjabi, Aalia was an old maid. Aalia is my Mom, his sister, and she was married and carrying Nadimah at 17.

The noise got louder and we all looked over at the door from the living room, only to see this monstrosity walk in, followed by my parents.

Back in the 1970s, some misguided soul came up with something he called the leisure suit. From what I gather, the only people who wore them were car salesmen and other losers. You might find one at a garage sale these days, on a table along with a hula hoop and a boomerang.

Even though we were not religious, In honour of Eid, Saleem Chacha was wearing a traditional silk suit. Not only a leisure suit, he had the audacity to have a derby hat the same colour. My first impression of the colour was lime green, but I don't think any self-respecting lime would be caught dead wearing that colour. I doubt that it even existed in nature with the possible exception of something you might find in the diaper of a baby who had had too many strained peas. Come to think of it, I may have seen that colour in pictures of an cricketers or mosqueson the Internet. One with a white top, because nobody would have the guts to paint a complete car that colour.

I smiled and said, "Nice suit, Saleem Chacha."

Mom made a face as she looked at the ceiling and he said, "Yeah, it's really the cat's meow.