Shortly before leaving Delhi for the summer, I bought a fancy Indian hat for my dad, whose birthday was June 1. Doesn’t he look dapper?

Indian men wear such hats in weddings. I’m not sure if they serve another purpose, but I was smitten. On a whim, I returned to Babu Market the day before our departure and picked up two more hats for my nephews. As I was leaving the market, I spotted some tempting outfits for little boys. They included a stiff shiny lamé shirt, sequined vest, coordinating scarf with silky tassles, and shimmery pants with a baggy bottom and tightly tapered legs. Again, I have no idea why or where boys would wear these clothes. Ceremonies? Weddings? How about a mighty battle in the Detroit suburb of Shelby?

If I were a little boy, I wouldn’t be caught dead in such a thing, so I knew I had to broach the topic carefully while babysitting Nico and Paul last week:
“Hey, did you know that where I live in India, they used to have powerful kings? They lived in big palaces, and they had tigers as pets. They rode elephants and had to fight in dangerous wars to keep the bad guys out of their awesome forts. And guess what? (voice drops to a whisper) I brought some of the king’s clothes just for you.”
Slowly, I pulled the garments out of my bag and touched them gingerly with great awe.
“Can we put this on now?” Nico asked, wide-eyed with excitement.
“Sure,” I whispered.
They quickly tore off their shorts and T-shirts. The Indian tops were impossibly small; we tried pretty hard but had to give up. They pulled on the ridiculous bottoms, which don’t have a waistband, so I had to fold the top over to make it smaller and then tucked the fabric in their underpants. They put on the vests, scarves and hats and TRANSFORMED into Mughal warriors.
“We need swords!” Nico shouted.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t bring swords,” I said.
“We have some!” The boys flew down to the basement and returned with Star Wars light sabers.
“Can we go outside?” they begged.
“Well, heck yeah,” I said, still a bit shocked at the reaction to these costumes.

In their front yard, they fought battles, took turns being the good king and the bad king, hacked their way through the jungles of India, dashed back in to get a big rubber snake to dangle from a low-hanging branch (and then promptly whacked it out of the tree with their “swords”), demonstrated their finely tuned sword-twirling skills, struck yoga poses (?), and otherwise played non-stop for about half an hour.

I just wanted to kiss their royal little tummies, but I didn’t want them to break character.

When Kate and John got home, the boys posted themselves on a loveseat with the light sabers shoved upright into the couch cushions.
“Come see the kings,” they said.
Their parents played along, bowing low and kissing the boys’ hands.

Best present EVER.

Here are some more shots from the Battle of Shelby.