pagri

The poor labourer was at first somewhat astonished, and frightened by this sudden metamorphosis, but soon overcoming the new feeling, he carefully tied the ruby in his pagri or turban, and returned home […]

I recognized the eldest Miss Copleigh, because she had a pagri round her helmet, and the younger had not.

A pagri was a form of "illegal payment" that had developed to circumvent colonial rent restrictions. Landlords demanded a large lump-sum payment in lieu of the low monthly rent, and this also made it very difficult for refugees without means to rent houses in the city.