The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters Page 6

  Rajni poked her head between them. “She’s not Polly Mishra.”

  “They know, Rajni,” Jezmeen said. “He said my name. Are you boys fans of the show? Here, let’s take a quick selfie together, and—”

  The boys began to snicker and nudge each other again. “Do it,” Star Wars boy whispered to the boy with patchy facial hair.

  The boy let out a theatrical sigh. “Oh, Jezmeen Shergill,” he said, “I was dying to meet you.” And then he stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes, and flapped his hands. The other boys collapsed into laughter.

  What the hell was he doing? Shirina stared at the boys, forgetting for a moment where they were and how much disruption they were creating. The boys scrambled to their feet and out of the hall. Jezmeen’s face was ashen.

  “You all right?” Shirina asked, still puzzled. She reached out but Jezmeen’s shoulder flinched at her touch. Jezmeen turned away, pulling her phone from her bag and tapping away rapidly.

  “I wonder where their parents are,” Rajni remarked, looking over her shoulder at the boys. “I’d like to have a word with them.”

  “Just drop it,” Jezmeen said, not looking up from her phone.

  “They’re obviously here on holidays with family—you’d think their parents brought them here to get some spiritual enlightenment, not sit around—”

  “I said, drop it,” Jezmeen said. Her eyes were blazing. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “One hundred thousand.”

  It meant nothing to Shirina. She looked at Rajni, who looked just as perplexed.

  They stood for a while in tense silence. A pair of women walked past, looking at them curiously. Shirina was conscious of the scene they were probably presenting to passersby—three sisters at an impasse in a terrible family argument.

  “Why don’t we just start our work at the langar hall?” Shirina suggested brightly, eager to dismantle this tableau.

  “I’ll join you both in a few minutes,” Jezmeen said. Shirina and Rajni watched as she turned around and pushed her way out through the stream of people entering the prayer hall.

  “Should one of us follow her?” Shirina asked.

  Rajni shook her head and sighed. “It’s Jezmeen,” she said. A sufficient explanation for Shirina. Jezmeen existed in her own sphere, and trying to understand her crises was like walking late into a house party where all the other guests had already become friends. Over the past few years, Shirina’s sense of solitude had grown more profound as Jezmeen chased auditions and pined to be noticed. Sometimes she forgot that they used to talk to each other more, because every conversation that Shirina could recall having with Jezmeen in adulthood was about Jezmeen: what she was doing, where she was going, what she wanted. Jezmeen never really thought about the consequences of her actions for other people. They were a long way now from when they’d been little girls, staying up so late into the night playing and chatting that Mum more or less gave up on setting a proper bedtime. When was the last time Shirina went breathless from giggling with Jezmeen? You two, knock it off and go to bed now, Rajni would call from downstairs, so much sterner and scarier than Mum. They would pretend to oblige, reducing their voices to whispers, which inevitably became louder until Rajni marched up the stairs to tell them off again.

  This wasn’t a good start to their journey. Mum believed that whatever happened in the morning set the tone for the rest of the day—all of her rituals were completed by the time the sun rose. If Mum were here, she wouldn’t be happy. The morning wasn’t even over and they were already down to two.

  The langar hall throbbed with the same noise and energy of a Delhi street, but the scene was surprisingly organized. People sat on the floor in rows and ate with their hands from metal trays. Servers roamed up and down the lines, refilling plates with rotis and ladlefuls of dal. “Of course you already know that in the Sikh religion, we believe in serving food to anybody who comes to the temple, regardless of their creed, gender, or income,” Mum had written in her letter, after explaining the significance of this temple. “They don’t have to worship here. They don’t have to offer any services, or money. This is a very good system, and one that helped our family after your father died.”

  Shirina was aware of the temple’s welfare from the meals that Mum used to bring home from the morning service, usually at times when the cupboards were bare. “We’re still okay,” Mum would say, looking at a full plate before her. Her tone was never convincing enough. Shirina would look at the plate and see the thinness of the roti, the watery dal, and sense that there was only so much charity they could ask for.

  Shirina and Rajni entered a wide back kitchen, which bustled with activity. Along one wall, enormous steel pots were being stirred slowly by young turbaned men with ladles the size and shape of oars. In the corner, a cluster of older women kneaded balls of dough. The serving line was being set up and there were young children pushing for a chance to put out the plates.

  Rajni wandered off to the vegetable counter and, with a few quick nods and smiles with the other women there, she was handed a knife, a chopping board, and a tubful of carrots. Shirina considered her options more carefully. There was a counter dedicated to roti-making but those women were experts—just look at how they were flattening the dough into such perfect circles with the flick of their wrists. They were deep in conversation as well; Shirina would be intruding. She almost turned a full circle considering her options before she felt somebody gripping her by the shoulders. She turned around to see a small elderly woman standing before her.

  “Looking for something to do? Can you take my place kneading dough for a while? Young thing like you would do a faster job than these.” The woman held up her hands and showed Shirina her curled arthritic fingers. Shirina felt a pang of sadness, remembering the way Mum clutched the edges of her letter, her voice shaking slightly as she read it to them. Grief came to her like a series of aftershocks—every time she thought she had moved on, something new reminded her of Mum.

  Shirina thought some introductions might be needed but as soon as they saw her approaching, the women shifted and a space opened up for her. She drove the heel of her palm into the dough and then ran her knuckles over it and repeated this motion until the dough was soft and smooth. Then she started a fresh batch, combining the water and flour in a steel bowl. The fingers on one hand became sticky, so she switched to the other. Around her, pots crashed and voices shot into the air. The other women’s chatter blended with the commotion. It was enough distraction, she thought at first, but as her motions quickly settled into a routine, the spaces between the noises began to open wide.

  It had been quiet like this in the moment Shirina’s mother-in-law opened the door to find her resting her head against the taxi driver’s chest. Mother had stood stiffly in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest as the driver apologetically explained that he was just making sure she got home safely. “Thank you,” she said to the driver, before pulling Shirina into the house and shutting the door. “Get upstairs,” she ordered.

  The morning after, her skull still throbbing from the wine, she had joined Sehaj and his mother at the breakfast table. Sehaj gave her a terse smile and Mother didn’t even look at her. Shirina sat still, unsure of what to do. In her family, disagreements were shouted out until voices went hoarse. Here, nobody said anything. So this was what Sehaj meant when he said that his family rarely fought. Shirina opened her mouth to say how sorry she was but nothing came out. She realized how scared she was of doing the wrong thing again. When Mother did finally speak, it was to announce that she was going back to bed. The silent treatment lasted all weekend until Mother announced she had a doctor’s appointment the following Friday afternoon. “You will drive me there,” she said, and Shirina was so grateful that Mother was speaking to her again that she canceled a meeting and took half a day off work. She wanted to make sure she was on time to pick Mother up and bring her home as well.

  In the folded printout from a website about Sikhism that Rajni had read last
night, there was a quote about the simplicity of service leading to meditative thoughts. She was supposed to feel a sense of oneness with others and herself, so that her mind was free to focus on the present.

  The work was certainly simple. Rajni chopped carrots into a pile until it threatened to topple over the edges of the board. Then she swept it into a big bowl and carried it to the station where a vegetarian curry was bubbling in a pot the size of a small bathtub.

  She’d repeated this process a dozen times but the pinch in her shoulder interrupted any meditative thoughts. Then there was the pulsing pain just behind her eyes, now a constant presence. She had been unable to sleep last night from a combination of jet leg and flashes of acute anxiety about becoming a grandmother at forty-three. She cast a look at the gathering of older women kneading dough next to Shirina. They were grandmothers—dupattas tucked behind ears, backs stooped toward their work. She straightened her own posture and checked the time. Kabir would be fast asleep on his stomach with one leg thrown over the empty side of the bed.

  The steam from the row of pots made beads of sweat prickle on Rajni’s forehead. How many hours of service did one need to contribute in order to feel closer to God? It had only been about an hour and she already needed a break. She nodded to the women she was working with and as she moved toward the door she glanced over her shoulder at Shirina, quietly kneading dough, and Jezmeen, who had eventually returned and was elbow-deep in soapsuds at the industrial sink.

  Stepping out of the kitchen, Rajni expected to feel an instant release, but the langar hall was packed now. She pushed through the crowds, carefully tiptoeing past cups of tea that lined a narrow serving aisle. The fresh air and the sight of an unbroken blue sky above, when she finally descended the stairs, was gratifying. The grounds outside were a welcoming open space, with patterned tiled floors and long stretches of maroon carpet creating paths for worshippers between the low-domed buildings. Rajni walked up to the sarovar, a large pool at the temple’s entrance. The water rippled from the movements of bathing worshippers, breaking Rajni’s reflection. She pulled her short hair back and even through the movement of the water, she could see how much she looked like Mum these days—the sharp chin and dark eyebrows. Even when she smiled, she appeared stern and disapproving, or so her students said.

  At the edge of the pool, a woman lowered her feet into the water, a small wave sweeping up to darken the border of her salwar. An elderly man wearing only a dhoti around his waist stood in the center of the pool, bending his knees to reach down and scoop the water in his hands and pour it over his head. As it cascaded down his neck and shoulders, he tipped his head up to the sky and smiled beatifically. Plump orange fish cut their paths through the water, their tails flickering like faulty bulbs. With unexpected grace, the man folded at his hips to gather more water. Then he brought his cupped hands to his lips and drank.

  Rajni flinched. She didn’t mean to, it was an involuntary response to the man ingesting water that others were bathing in. Pissing in as well—surely the peaceful grin spreading on that child’s face was not from a spiritual release?

  The bathing was unnecessary, although Mum had told and retold Rajni the story of her name and its roots in holy waters many times. Bibi Rajni, a woman married off to a leper, had remained devoted to her husband, carting him around in a wheelbarrow. One afternoon, he went to take a bath in the sarovar outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar and miraculously, his leprosy was cured. “Remember your namesake,” was Mum’s favorite character-building advice. The result was a childhood spent making tenuous allegorical connections (maybe being Asian was like having a terrible disease and she had to wash in the local pool so the girls on the bus didn’t declare her street Paki Zone?).

  Rajni and her sisters were expected to bathe in holy water once they got to the Golden Temple. It was one of those pilgrimage duties that Mum had stipulated, preceding a quote about bathing in God’s immortal nectar that did not further clarify the difference between nectar and water, nor the figurative nature of this instruction. The power of metaphor was largely lost on Mum anyway. She had wanted physical proof of the presence of God when her symptoms first appeared, as if she could already sense the dire diagnosis. Wanting to help, Rajni had printed glossy pictures of all ten Gurus and pasted them around the house, which became a shrine of its own. Kirtan songs floated through the hallways, choral and sorrowful. Incense and birdseed and fruit-platter offerings became commonplace. It was all too reminiscent of the days after Dad died, when superstitions and rituals became Mum’s insurance policy against further misfortune.

  In the hospital as well, everything was done in the spirit of making Mum more comfortable when they knew that a painful end was upon her. Do whatever she wants had been Rajni’s mantra since returning from her last trip to India, and now it was even more pertinent because denying Mum any hope was akin to torture. Rajni even began feeling guilty for resisting Mum years back, when she tried to prescribe religious rituals and herbal remedies for her fertility problems. “I’m telling you, it worked for me. After eleven years of thinking I couldn’t have any more children, out came Jezmeen and then Shirina three years after her,” Mum insisted. Unable to deter Mum, Rajni finally resorted to the humiliating revelation that she and Kabir had stopped trying—stopped having sex altogether, in fact. The last thing Mum said on the matter was: “Well, at least you’ve got a son. At least you don’t have to worry like I did, with three daughters.”

  At least that.

  Rajni looked down at the water and took a small step toward it. Her feet were still bare and as they made contact with the small puddles that other pilgrims had left on their way out, she felt some relief. The water was cool and it protected her soles from the sunbaked tiles. She took another step, and then another. Now her toes were touching the murky water. The ghostly bodies of fish curved and shot off. The man who had drunk the water was now taking slow strides across the length of the pool, his knees lifting high like a soldier. Rajni remained on the edges for a long time, the heat prompting her to inch closer and closer until her entire feet were submerged. She closed her eyes. Spots of light darted across the darkness and then eventually, they faded. The din of traffic—those angry, insistent horns—could be heard in the distance. A child’s high-pitched squeal rang out, shattering Rajni’s inner calm before she even began to summon it. She sighed and opened her eyes.

  She didn’t want to be here. Especially not now, with everything happening at home, but also not ever. India did not suit her and not least because of the memories it evoked—physically, her body rebelled against the country: an itch from the soot-filled air was beginning in her throat, the bumpy car rides made her stomach turn, and a bout of indigestion was inevitable, no matter how staunchly she abstained from potentially contaminated food. Jezmeen and Shirina didn’t understand Rajni’s aversion to India because by the time they came of age, a wave of multicultural pride was sweeping over England and all of a sudden it was trendy to have an ethnic background. While Rajni had waited by the radio with her finger poised over the deck to record her favorite Top of the Pops song, Jezmeen’s speakers played Hindi song remixes. At fifteen, Rajni had spent Saturday afternoons dancing frantically at those nightclubs which opened in the daytime for Asian kids whose parents wouldn’t let them out at night, while Shirina’s twenty-fifth year saw her gladly uploading her picture onto a Sikh matrimonial website. Rajni had done her best to pave the way for her little sisters to be more English, and instead they went ahead and embraced their culture, proving Mum’s point that Rajni had no business having an identity crisis in the first place.

  There were other reasons behind Rajni’s complicated history with this country, reasons she could not explain to Jezmeen and Shirina. When they were planning this trip, Jezmeen had wondered aloud at why they never visited India when they were growing up. “Mum couldn’t afford it,” Rajni reminded her. “Single mother with three kids? There was no way she could make that trip.” The steep price of a holiday
had always been a convenient excuse, and it stopped her sisters from asking any other questions. I can never go back there, Mum had cried one afternoon when Rajni was sixteen, and despite knowing better, she couldn’t help feeling that this was her fault. She still felt responsible for Mum’s banishment from her family.

  In the rippled water, Rajni’s reflection was distorted. Her chin multiplied and overlapped, and her cheeks sagged. She withdrew her feet from the water. The sight of her pruned toes filled her with sorrow as she remembered Mum’s bare feet poking out from under her blanket at the hospital. Her slow and labored breaths were painful to listen to. “Why isn’t she wearing any socks?” Rajni had demanded of the nurses, who scurried around the foot of the bed, eventually finding Mum’s socks. Rajni dismissed them from the room and she rolled the socks onto Mum’s feet herself. Her skin was ice cold to the touch, and Rajni had massaged her feet gently, hoping to ease those hard, heaving breaths. She had pressed her hands into Mum’s bony heels and high arches until her own shoulders ached. She had waited for something divine to come from all this effort, all this wishing, but it didn’t.

  Chapter Four

  Purity of heart, soul, and mind are all important for achieving spiritual healing. You should not be intoxicated at any point during this journey. Please try to refrain from drinking alcohol while in India. Please also dress modestly and be respectful to the culture. I happen to know of a very good tailor in Karol Bagh market—Madhuri Fashions—if you want something stylish but also suitable for this journey.

  That part of Mum’s letter was definitely aimed at Jezmeen. She noted the word “try” and congratulated herself for not drinking until she was back in her hotel room after their morning of service in the temple. Jezmeen opened the fridge door and surveyed the minibar. This tiny bottle of Grey Goose fit in her palm, so she was only sinning a little bit. She twisted off the cap, opened her mouth, and tipped the contents down her gullet. The current crisis definitely warranted morning boozing.