The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters Read online

  She was already a bit worn by the time she elbowed her way up to the Metro station. Traffic hollered and screeched below her but the noises rose up and followed her toward the platform. From the bridge, she had the best view of Hanuman, the Monkey God, a gigantic statue that towered over the link road and made miniatures of the buildings and trees below it. His hands came together at his chest and his tail curled to the top of his head. Jezmeen couldn’t stop staring but it was the sheer size of the statue rather than its spiritual meaning that captivated her. She wondered how long it took to build something of such scale, and if the builders had intended to make him loom over the city like this, the cars and bicycles skirting around below in a ring of disorder. She supposed it gave a reminder of how small she was, how insignificant, but walking along a crowded Delhi market street already gave her that message loud and clear.

  Inside the station, the rush of people followed a slightly more ordered pace under the bright fluorescent lights. Central Secretariat station was only a few stops away, with a change.

  A faded pink arrow on the sleek tiled floor indicated where the female-only carriage would line up with the platform. Jezmeen followed the arrow and found herself in the presence of a large group of women. It occurred to her that this was the first time since coming to India that she had seen so many women. A pair wearing kurti tops over stylish tight jeans were deep in conversation. Snippets of chatter filled the air.

  “I mean, it’s selfish, don’t you think?”

  “Not if she didn’t agree first, but these companies do that kind of thing.”

  “She didn’t sign a contract or what?”

  “They’re saying it’s void because she joined after the fact . . .”

  Jezmeen’s gaze wandered over the other women standing alone. Many were staring at their mobile phones, their lips curling into small smiles as their messages appeared. A middle-aged lady wearing a sari dragged a shopping trolley behind her. Plastic bags poked out of the grilles. When the train arrived, she hauled her goods into it, shooting a weary look at the others who piled past her.

  Being in the carriage was such a relief after the short walk to the station. Her memory drifted back to their first day in India, when Rajni warned her about the effect her revealing clothing would have. But why did the women have to be sequestered like this just because the men couldn’t control themselves?

  The train glided into the next station and the doors slid open. Young women—students, Jezmeen thought—piled into the carriage and something changed in the atmosphere. Their voices trilled and they called out to each other. The other women looked up and shifted, some turning up the volume on their phones. Many of these new passengers were wearing matching T-shirts. Jezmeen struggled to read the print across their chests in the crowded carriage, but from eavesdropping, it seemed they were headed to India Gate too, for some sort of event.

  A girl in a tight purple T-shirt and ears studded in tiny rings stepped back as the train jostled, her foot landing on Jezmeen’s. She tossed her head back and said, “Sorry,” and then her eyes lingered. There was a flash of recognition in them. She whispered to a friend standing next to her, who shot Jezmeen a glance as well. Jezmeen began to feel queasy—what if they knew her from the video? She could hear the snickers of those nasty boys from the temple. She pulled her sunglasses out of her bag and popped them on. Behind these wide tinted lenses, she was a little less recognizable.

  When the train arrived at their destination, the T-shirted women poured out and the others who weren’t with them dispersed, hurrying along to their lives. This loosening of the crowd allowed Jezmeen to see what was written on their backs: WOMEN’S RIGHTS MARCH.

  She could see the writing on their placards as well now: NO BODY DESERVES THIS and END RAPE CULTURE, SAVE OUR CULTURE.

  The woman in the purple T-shirt turned to look at Jezmeen again. The corners of her lips turned up in a small smile. “Are you . . . Polly Mishra?”

  Jezmeen nodded miserably before she realized that the girl had said the wrong name.

  “I knew it!” The girl’s face brightened and she thumped her friend on the arm. “I told you it’s really her. Polly Mishra!”

  Her friend grinned. “Oh shit,” she said. “Who got you?”

  “Hmm?” Jezmeen asked.

  “Was it Sunayana? She’s always pulling surprises like this. Last year, she got Priyanka Chopra to send a tweet about our Slut Shame Walk.”

  Jezmeen shook her head. She wanted to tell them that they had the wrong person, that she was not Polly Mishra. But she hesitated for a moment, suspended in the fantasy of being somebody else for the day. (What was Polly Mishra doing right now? Whatever it was, she was certainly having an easier time than Jezmeen these days.) Then the girl in the purple T-shirt let out a hoot. Her noise attracted the attention of the other marchers. “Ladies, listen up,” she cried, linking arms with Jezmeen. “Polly Mishra is here, and she’s joining us for the march!”

  A cheer went through the crowd. Jezmeen made sure to keep her sunglasses on. Bashfulness was the way to play this whole identity-stealing thing. There was too much attention on her otherwise, and somebody would out her. The tide of women carried her along to the station’s exit. The girl in the purple T-shirt introduced herself as Sneha. “I’m one of the organizers,” she explained. “This is Anjuli,” she said, nodding at the girl who was next to her. “She went to high school with the victim.”

  “The victim?” Jezmeen asked.

  Sneha looked at her. “Haven’t you been paying attention to the news?”

  Sure, Jezmeen thought with shame. She’d been clicking obsessively on her own name and looking for any headlines, any blog posts or tweets that kept her relevant and afloat in the online world.

  “No,” Jezmeen said. “But I’m almost afraid to ask.” It had to be another gang rape, she realized, something horrific enough to inspire this sort of turnout.

  “A twenty-year-old was violently attacked by a man in a bazaar last week,” Anjuli said. “She was trying on clothes in the fitting room when he barged his way in. His brother and another shopkeeper held her down—” Anjuli had a delicate face and wide eyes that glistened with anger. Her voice choked on the last words.

  Jezmeen’s own eyes became hot with tears. After the bus gang rape in Delhi that made international headlines, she had followed the protests, the wave of feminism that swept across India—students marching, lighting candles, staging sit-ins. We’ve had enough, was the message from these teeming masses of bodies showing their support for the victim and their anger for the injustice. But the reporting afterward stoked her rage to a point where it burned out and she became disillusioned. The rapists’ lawyers had defended their clients by saying that the girl had enticed them by being out at night. A vocal counterprotest group insisted that not all men were rapists and that “rape culture” was a gross generalization. And there were more rapes. Either they were reported more, or they were happening more—the difference didn’t matter much to Jezmeen because they were still happening.

  Fear struck Jezmeen’s chest as she thought about her own trip to the market with Shirina yesterday. “I’m with you,” Jezmeen said. “I’m here to give my support.” Anjuli nodded and took her hand.

  They descended the station’s steps and emerged into the grimy summer atmosphere. Jezmeen squinted against the sunlight and followed the women toward India Gate. Its grand arc was triumphant against the blank, white canvas of cloudless sky. Visitors moved in small masses—the retiree Westerners with tall socks and bulky cameras hanging from their necks, the fresh-faced Indian couples grinning at their phones propped up on selfie sticks. Vendors wove between them, peddling balloons and cheap battery-operated helicopters and bubble wands.

  “So I guess you’re in India anyway for some kind of publicity event?” Anjuli asked as they pushed against the burning heat toward the gate.

  “I’m here on a holiday of sorts,” Jezmeen said.

  “Alone?” Anjuli asked. />
  “With family,” Jezmeen said.

  “For how long?” Anjuli asked.

  “I’m only in Delhi till tomorrow morning, then we’re off to Amritsar,” Jezmeen said. “We’re visiting the Golden Temple.”

  “It’s divine,” Anjuli said with a smile. “You go to a place like that and you wonder why the whole world can’t be a sanctuary. We’re obviously capable of peace, but only in designated sites.”

  The women began to assemble as they arrived in the square’s center. It wasn’t clear where or how the protest would start, but Jezmeen had a feeling she’d know when it began. The tourists and other people seemed aware that something was about to happen. They dispersed with some curiosity and perhaps a little bit of fear? Jezmeen intended to stay back and watch but Anjuli grabbed her hand and with surprising force, pulled her into the center of the circle. A black duffel bag was resting at her feet. She pulled out a flat piece of wood that unfolded into a stand, giving her just enough height to be noticed. The stand gave her confidence. Jezmeen could see her shoulders squaring, her eyes shining. Sneha handed her a loudspeaker and it began.

  “WHAT DID SHE DO?” Anjuli’s voice burst across the air. “SHE WAS JUST SHOPPING IN JANPATH MARKET FOR AN OUTFIT.”

  Jezmeen surveyed the crowd—the other women were captivated. They nodded as Anjuli recited statistics of sexual harassment claims and gang rape incidents. She went backward in chronological order, from the present day to the 2012 bus gang rape that started these protests. “THESE ARE ONLY THE HIGHLIGHTED INCIDENTS,” she shouted. “THESE ARE ONLY THE REPORTED INCIDENTS. WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING, WHO KNOWS WHEN IT WILL STOP?”

  A chant began among the women: “When will it stop?” Sneha led them, pumping her fist into the air. “When will it stop?” Jezmeen found herself saying the words too, her shouts blending with the collective chants so she could no longer hear herself, only this powerful united voice. She looked past the crowd, expecting to see people watching them, joining in, but disappointingly, India continued around them. The traffic crawled, the vendors courted customers, the tourists skirted the edges of the protest, some taking pictures, others maintaining a safe distance.

  It was Sneha’s turn now. She stood up on the stand and started reciting statistics—875 women to 1,000 men in Haryana, she shouted. A girl waved a cardboard sign that said NO MORE FEMALE FETICIDE. Honor killings were still happening in rural parts of the country—two girls held a banner high: THERE’S NO HONOUR IN KILLING. The protest seemed to be for all manner of women’s rights in India, and there was so much to fight for. It felt a bit overwhelming, like India itself. Jezmeen felt queasy looking at a placard displaying the bruised and bloodied faces of two village women who had been sentenced to a beating by a tribal court, for adultery. Next to their faces were images of Hindu goddesses, their faces covered in bruises and cuts to make them look like battered women—RESPECT ALL WOMEN THE SAME WAY was scrawled across the top. The tall girl carrying the sign held it high so it could be seen beyond the crowd.

  “And we have an international spokesperson here today. Polly Mishra, star of The Boathouse series in the UK, is here to tell us about how domestic violence against women must stop.”

  All heads turned to Jezmeen. Sneha was beckoning her to the stand. The crowd parted slightly to let her through. Her heart quickened for some reason. She never got nervous before auditions or experienced stage fright—just a squeeze of anxiety, which she quelled with promises of a drink afterward. Just behave yourself, she told her gut, and there will be rewards. But she was nervous now. She realized that she hadn’t spoken as herself in a very long time.

  The crowd was silent as Jezmeen took the loudspeaker. What could she say? There was a sea of expectant faces but they seemed to know everything already—Sneha had given them the statistics and they lived it every day, didn’t they? The teasing on the streets, the checking of their own outfits to see if they might be too arousing, the phone calls to their parents to let them know where they were, the clutching fear when they boarded a bus at night.

  “Your experience is more valuable than my words would be,” Jezmeen began. “You women do more battle just walking out your door in one day than I have to do in one year in London.” She shook her head. The words were not coming out the right way. It sounded a little bit like she was chastising them for not living in a place that was better for women.

  The crowd seemed to shuffle with restlessness. Jezmeen could hear the car horns and vendors’ shouts in the distance. “When will it stop?” she asked. “When do we decide it’s enough? Do we keep shouting while the rest of India moves on? Do our words mean anything to all these people continuing their daily lives?” She made a great sweeping motion to include everyone. Now they were interested. From where Jezmeen was standing, she noticed a ripple of excitement, as visible as an electric current, traveling through the crowd. The women holding signs straightened their arms to pitch them higher. Anjuli smiled and nodded.

  “We’re telling each other about the injustice, but we already know, don’t we? We’re living it,” Jezmeen said, her anger gathering momentum. “Tell them!”

  Heads began to turn. The women who started on the outer edges of the crowd were suddenly at its forefront—it was like those dreaded primary school games where everybody lined up and the one at the back was announced the leader. “Tell them!” somebody shouted. “Tell them!” This became the resounding chant of the protest as the women turned their attention on the spectators. Tourists began to nervously put their cameras away and the clusters of people who had stopped in their tracks to watch the women were beginning to disperse. Only one group of onlookers remained rooted in place—men, very much like the ones that Jezmeen encountered on her walk to the station earlier. Scattered on the periphery of the protest, they were suddenly more visible than the rest of the crowd because of their stillness. She had not even noticed them when she and the women arrived, but of course, they were not organized. There was no counterprotest planned, but now that the women were turning toward them, they were afraid, and they found each other somehow.

  First it was just a pair of men, who pointed at the women. A few more men joined in, jeering and calling out. They walked toward the crowd, chests puffed out, but their movements were slow and hesitant. The women outnumbered the men, and they knew it.

  “Tell them!” one woman shouted, pumping her fist into the air. Jezmeen nodded and joined the chorus. The gaining momentum of this protest was exhilarating—her voice grew hoarse and her skin was slick with sweat but she didn’t want to stop fighting.

  “Tell them!” The girl holding the bruised goddess sign threw her arms high into the air. The images caught the attention of the men. Suddenly they were walking faster and shouting louder. Jezmeen wasn’t afraid until she noticed more men coming in from other directions. One of them pointed right at the sign, his cheeks red with fury.

  Jezmeen couldn’t understand the men’s words because there was no unity in their response—they hadn’t had time to prepare, after all. But later, she realized she was wrong. Of course they had time to prepare. For years now, women’s protests had been taking place at India Gate and on message boards online, at dinner tables and college campuses. The responses on these men’s faces, now full of rage that topped the fiery glares of the women, had been building up for years.

  “Hey, everyone!” Jezmeen shouted. She wanted to call for the crowd to calm down but then it surged like a wave, carrying her along with it. She tripped on another woman’s leg and felt her blouse being grabbed, the fabric ripping loose. In the spaces between, she saw several men running up to the crowd, shouting—they were police officers. The angry mob of men didn’t run away. They shouted and pointed to the women, who shouted back. To Jezmeen’s shock, an officer raised his hand in a threat to hit one of the shouting girls. It was Anjuli, with bared teeth.

  As the officers began working their way through the crowd, suddenly they were on top of Jezmeen. “Wait,” she said. “I
’m a British citiz—” It was too late. The cops swooped in and led her away.

  Oh my god. Oh my god.

  Somebody was whispering those words. Jezmeen’s shoulder throbbed from the forceful way the policemen had pinned down her arms and clapped the handcuffs on, even though she hadn’t resisted. Her knees were trembling, and as the van jerked and lurched through the slow-flowing traffic, she felt her stomach churning. The van seemed filled beyond its capacity. Jezmeen could feel the humidity of other breaths all around her. The windows of the van were caged and crisscrossed with wires so Jezmeen had no sense of where they were, or how far they had gone from India Gate. Outside, it had been such a blindingly bright day, but this gauzy view threw the city into muted, frightening shadows.

  Oh my god, oh my god.

  If Jezmeen knew who was saying that, she’d try to assure her. You were exercising your right to free speech, there’s nothing wrong with that. The police came racing in because they wanted to keep the conflict from getting out of hand. The men who wanted to start a riot were probably arrested as well. She didn’t know if any of this was true, but she was too scared to consider the alternative.

  A girl let out a loud, ragged sob when the van came to a final stop. Everybody heard it—Jezmeen sensed the heads turning, instinctively searching for the noise. The fear was palpable; without being able to see or know where exactly they were, they were terrified. They waited for a long time in the darkness of that van before the door rolled open and an officer barked at them to come out. Jezmeen struggled to scoot her way to the door, then crouch and negotiate the step without being able to grasp anything for balance. Once her feet touched the ground, she could feel the tremor in her knees. An officer called out and moments later, the black gates leading to the station yawned open.