In fact, the city fathers had a garland of 28 gilded copper leaves made to protect David's modesty, and in later years he wore a fig leaf as in this photo from the 1860s shows.
But, his critics charge, all his talk of development and reform is simply the figleaf for a lifelong commitment to a divisive Hindu-nationalist agenda.
If you keep using her as a cloak for your stupid stuff, you're going to keep doing stupid stuff because it gives you permission to do anything if you call on the nobility of taking care of special needs.
I think it was used as a veil for embarrassment, almost without a doubt, but I think it was more likely to have been incompetence rather than deliberate dissembling.
When the deed was done she was as naked and vulnerable as a woman could be. Not even a hair to hide behind. A little laugh burst from her lips, bleak and bitter.