In 1914 a new account of the revolt at Meerut appeared, authored by the erstwhile Mughal courtier Zahir Dehlvi. Dehlvi’s account, in Urdu, described a heated conversation between the rebel cavalrymen, fresh from Meerut, and the aged Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar – whom the cavalrymen wished to elevate as the symbolic leader of their revolt. According to Dehlvi, the emperor, appalled at the reports of indiscriminate killing of the British at Meerut, asked what had possessed the men to behave in such a barbaric manner. The soldiers told the emperor about the offensive cartridge episode and the subsequent court-martial and imprisonment of their brethren. They pointed in particular to the “reckless” gender-inversion taunts of local women, which acted like fuel on fire and drove the cavalrymen mad with a desire for manly revenge. Significantly, Dehlvi described the women not as prostitutes of the bazaar but as “the women whose men had been imprisoned.” The chapter also examines the process of Dehlvi’s coming into possession of the story and, further, describes his escape from Dehli and years of wandering before ultimately settling in Hyderabad in the Deccan.