Burqas are expensive these days and worn not only by Muslim women but others too, including film actresses, college girls trying to hide their identity in cinema halls and out-of-the-way locations, and, of course, also by women indulging in crimes like pickpocketing. In this case, even male gangsters wear burqas, specially those trying to loot banks and people in crowded markets.
Incidentally, Honeypreet, the much-wanted girl in the Ram Rahim case, was also reportedly seen in a burqa. The burqa covers the whole body and the face also but the veil or naqab can be lifted by the wearer if she wants to converse with a friend, relative or acquaintance ~ and in some cases with a lover, like in the film, Mere Mehboob, in which the heroine, Sadhana, drops her books at Aligarh University and the hero, Rajendra Kumar, helps her to pick them up and she can’t help thanking the fellow-student with whom love blossoms later.
The hijabis different from the burqa as it covers only the head and face. It is more popular today even in the Western countries, where its wearer sometimes is roughed up by a hostile white-supremacy youth.
Black burqas are more in vogue than white ones, generally worn by Afghan women, as they don’t get dirty soon. Yet the white one was once very popular with Delhi, Lahore, Lucknow and Agra women as it was broad, with a hooded cap-like head covering that made street urchins shout, “Bandh Gobi” (cabbage) to tease the wearer. Sometimes the cry was, “Dayan aye (Look the witch)”. Now the burqas are more fashionably-made, with the lower body portion uncovered as they reach only up to below the waist.
The miniburqa is worn by trendy girls. So those who predicted the end of the burqa have been proved wrong as it has evolved in modern garb in keeping with the times. No wonder an emboldened wearer boasted to a college guy, “No one will pinch me now!”