The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  Day One: Arrival in Delhi

  Be patient. India is not going to be like London. The pollution and the bustling crowds will overwhelm you immediately. You girls always joked that I talked too loudly, and I turned everything into chaos. When you enter India, I want you to think about how it felt to leave this place and go somewhere as orderly as Britain, with ruler-straight rows of houses and trains that run on time. I also want you to understand how hard it was for me, adjusting to all of that quiet.

  Rajni’s headache was returning, like fingers pressing against her skull. This newly built boutique hotel in Karol Bagh with its patio dining was far removed from the chaos of Delhi that they experienced on the journey from the airport—the hustling luggage handlers, the cabdriver that dived into oncoming traffic to overtake his lane, the girls in tattered T-shirts that hung to their knees, dodging rickshaws and potholes with babies propped on their tiny hips. It had been a relief to finally arrive at the King’s Paradise Hotel in one piece, but a glance around the lobby during check-in confirmed that the pictures on the booking website had been aspirational—the doormen’s shoes left prints in the thin layer of plaster dust on the floor and there was some loud, clanging construction going on upstairs. The owner was putting finishing touches on the place, the staff explained as if their apologetic smiles could mask the strong smell of varnish that made Rajni’s head throb. They promised, however, that the hotel café was “one hundred percent ready.”

  The minute they sat down, Jezmeen began making fun of the menu. She pointed at a list of indulgent summer beverage offerings: an iced vanilla mango smoothie topped with whipped cream and seasonal fruits. “Isn’t that just a fancy mango lassi?” Jezmeen mused. “Look at this one—an iced turmeric latte sprinkled with cinnamon and coconut shavings. That’s just haldi doodh with ice and some toppings, isn’t it?”

  “It sounds pretty good to me,” Rajni said. She couldn’t believe she had complained about the warmer weather in London last week when it only hit eighty degrees. It was close to 104 here, a furious heat that seemed to demand an apology. If Mum wanted them to appreciate Britain, mission accomplished.

  Jezmeen continued to read the menu aloud: “King’s Paradise Hotel Café is a true crossroads between the traditions of the East and the modern comforts of the West.” She rolled her eyes. “So it’s for people who want to say they’ve been to India without having eaten the food or experienced the culture authentically.”

  “Could you not do that?” Rajni said. She was annoyed enough with the hotel’s false advertising. “If I picked some three-star hotel with monkeys shitting in the lobby for the sake of authenticity, I’d never hear the end of it from you and Shirina.” She only added “and Shirina” to soften the blow. They both knew Shirina never complained about anything.

  Jezmeen ignored her and held up the menu. “Our monkeys are very well trained not to shit in the lobby. They have their own toilets made of fair-trade ceramic by local artists and they wipe their own arses with organic cotton tissues handwoven by blind Himalayan nuns,” she drawled.

  “Shut up,” Rajni said, but it felt good to smile. All through the flight, she didn’t stop replaying Anil’s revelation and its aftermath: the panic that seized his face as she collapsed; the lack of remorse once she recovered. “You’re being melodramatic,” he’d cried, and it sounded so familiar that Rajni wondered if she’d fainted herself into a time warp where she was arguing with Mum. There had been a shouting match before Anil finally stormed out the door. Rajni and Kabir spent all of the next day fretting over his future. Anil finally returned about twenty minutes before they left for the airport, and he said, “Nothing’s going to come between us, right?” For a moment, Rajni thought he was talking about their family. She nearly cried with relief. Then, as Anil began packing up his things, she understood.

  Rajni felt the panic rising in her stomach again. Her son would soon have a new family with his thirty-six-year-old girlfriend. She pressed a hand to her chest and took a sharp breath.

  “Everything all right?” Jezmeen asked.

  “Fine,” Rajni said. Thank goodness for this trip. Let Kabir talk some sense into their son—she had done all she could (mostly fainting and shouting) to no avail. She looked past the hotel’s walled-in patio, where the foggy sky began. In the distance, a poorly tuned chorus of car horns pierced the atmosphere. The air smelled like burned rubber. Delhi. It couldn’t be helped, Rajni supposed, although she wouldn’t mind putting more mayhem at arm’s length for a while. She had no desire to go out into the city, not after her last trip here with Mum. “I know my last trip to India was well over twenty years ago, but the last-minute bookings were very expensive”—in that part of the letter, Rajni could hear Mum’s pointed tone. It took her years to recover her losses from that trip, and an even longer time to forgive Rajni for what happened.

  There was a young European couple in the pool. The deep golden curlicues of a recent mehndi pattern showed strongly on the woman’s pale hands as they cut through the water, a postcard picture of holiday tranquillity.

  Rajni pulled copies of the trip itinerary from her bag. She had typed up Mum’s letter and made duplicates for Shirina and Jezmeen. Perhaps it was overkill—Jezmeen’s expression told her as much—but she had gone ahead and highlighted the activities according to three categories: Spiritual, Tourism, and Sentimental.

  “Was your laminating machine broken?” Jezmeen asked dryly, flapping the paper at Rajni.

  As a matter of fact, it was, but Rajni didn’t say so. “I thought we’d look this over together.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait till Shirina wakes up from her nap? She might have some suggestions.”

  “Mum set the itinerary,” Rajni reminded Jezmeen. “It’s not like there’s any discussion or negotiating involved.”

  “I’m sure we can tweak it a little.”

  Rajni stared at Jezmeen. No, they could not “tweak it a little.” This tendency to apply her own interpretation to Mum’s wishes had nearly got them all into massive trouble recently—had Jezmeen forgotten? No. Jezmeen matched her with an even look. She knew what she was doing; insisting that she was right.

  “Jesmeen, I think you’re missing the point—”

  “Can you call me Jezmeen, please?” Jezmeen looked stricken all of a sudden. “With a zed? I changed it legally two years ago and you’re still the only person who calls me Jesmeen.”

  “I’ll try to remember,” Rajni replied, but she didn’t think she’d try too hard. She loved the name Jesmeen; Mum had let her choose it. It was the sort of privilege that came with being eleven when your younger sister was born. Two years ago, Jezmeen had gone through some crisis over turning thirty and sent out an email to close friends and family saying that she was legally changing her name. Rajni hadn’t paid too much attention—Jezmeen thrived on theatrical announcements—so she was surprised when Jezmeen followed through with it. What difference did one letter make? Rajni wondered, but she didn’t need to hear an explanation from Jezmeen, with all of the accompanying eye rolling and pouting and the you-just-don’t-get-it looks.

  Rajni pointed to the itinerary, her finger resting on the header, The Golden Temple, Amritsar. “If the purpose of this trip is to do a pilgrimage for Mum, then we’re following this itinerary,” she tried again.

  “I get that, but I think there’s room to be flexible if, say, we don’t want to spend too much time in one place or we decide we want an extra day somewhere.”

  “It’s not that kind of trip,” Rajni insisted.

  Jezmeen plucked the sunglasses off her head and adjusted them on the bridge of her nose. She turned away so only her profile was visible to Rajni—those angular cheekbones, that small mole just at the top corner of her lip. The last time Rajni had stared so intently at her sister was at Mum’s funeral, when the bruise on Jezmeen’s cheek was just healing. There were no traces of it now.

  “We’ll have lots of quality time together, the three of us,” Rajni added. Hearing the false
cheer in her voice, she was grateful that she couldn’t fully catch Jezmeen’s reaction. They all needed to sit together and talk about what happened in Mum’s final hours—a calm and healing discussion now that they had some distance from all of it. Kabir had warned Rajni that it was naive to think reconciliation would be so easy, but she reckoned it was all in the atmosphere. The banks of the gently rippling waters surrounding the Golden Temple in Amritsar were much more conducive to open-heart conversation than a Pret A Manger in London—and how often were the three sisters in the same place now that Shirina had moved to Australia? Rajni was determined that they could make peace and move on.

  “You know, pilgrimages aren’t even a requirement of the Sikh religion,” Jezmeen said.

  “I’m aware of that,” Rajni replied calmly. Jezmeen was not going to get under her skin. Of all people, Rajni knew the futility of rituals. She had been a teenager when Dad died and Mum began performing little ceremonies to improve their family’s fate. Rajni thought that luck and fate were one and the same—Dad’s death had been unlucky, but Mum saw connections to a greater plan that needed adjusting.

  A waiter appeared at their table. He was young, with glossy gelled hair spiked upward and a name tag that read “Tarun.” He probably didn’t think Rajni noticed his eyes lingering on the line of cleavage that ran into Jezmeen’s tight tank top.

  “I’ll have an avocado, lime, and cilantro smoothie, please,” she said. Jezmeen made eye contact with Tarun and smiled.

  “Madam, I’m so very sorry but this drink is unavailable,” he said.

  “Okay then,” Rajni said, opening the menu. “I’ll have the . . . oh, this looks nice. The peach and strawberry daiquiri.”

  Tarun looked embarrassed. “Madam, we don’t have any strawberries at the moment.”

  “That’s all right,” Jezmeen cooed. Honestly, did she have to be such a flirt?

  Rajni scanned the menu. “Here. This one.” She pointed at the description that Jezmeen had been making fun of earlier. Below it, there was a picture of the iced vanilla mango smoothie with whipped cream and seasonal fruits. “I’ll have one. Jezmeen, you want one?”

  “No thanks,” Jezmeen said. “I’ll just have a cup of chai.”

  He smiled brightly at Jezmeen. “We have chai. So, madam, I repeat your order: one chai, one vanilla mango smoothie.” He strutted off before Rajni could ask about the selection of seasonal fruit.

  Rajni made another attempt with the itinerary. “It’s an early start tomorrow if we’re going to do the morning seva at Bangla Sahib,” Rajni said.

  Jezmeen did not respond. She was staring intently at her phone all of a sudden, her features scrunched in concentration. Moments later, she relaxed, but she continued to steal glimpses of the screen. “Are you connected?” Rajni asked. “They still haven’t confirmed my account yet.” The staff at the mobile phone kiosk in the airport had assured Rajni it would take less than ten minutes to verify her details, but here they were, nearly two hours later, and she still didn’t have any data.

  “I’m using the hotel’s Wi-Fi,” Jezmeen said. “So what are we doing tomorrow?”

  “We’ll cook and serve langar.” It was the foremost thing on Mum’s itinerary, not that she could expect Jezmeen to have read it.

  “So Mum sent us to India to wash dishes,” Jezmeen said. She looked up from her phone. “She must have taken some joy putting that task in the itinerary—make my daughters do housework like good girls.”

  “Men volunteer in the kitchen too,” Rajni reminded her.

  “But when they go home, they get to put their feet up, don’t they?”

  Rajni thought of Kabir and Anil sitting in their twin recliners watching football while she flitted around them, sometimes still wearing her blazer and work shoes. “Mmm,” she said, which was her standard reply when she agreed but didn’t want to.

  Her phone buzzed on the table. It was a message:

  “Mrs. RAJNI SHERGILL CHADHA. WELCOME TO INDIA. YOU HAVE SIGNED UP FOR 2 MB OF DATA AND FREE CALLS WITHIN INDIA. PLEASE CALL THIS NUMBER TO CONFIRM YOUR IDENTITY.”

  “Finally,” she said.

  After keying in her birth date and the special pin code, Rajni was connected to an operator who asked her for one last confirmation of her identity. “Your father’s name, ma’am.” Until she agreed to make this trip to India, Rajni hadn’t mentioned Dad’s name in years, but everybody here needed to know. The visa forms asked for his name; the customs officer required her to confirm it before letting her past the gates, and now she couldn’t register for a temporary mobile phone account without saying whose daughter she was. It didn’t matter that he’d been dead since she was a teenager. “Devinder Singh Shergill,” she said. The operator processed this information and after a series of clicks and rapid typing, pronounced her connected.

  “When you and Shirina get your phones sorted, there’s an app that you should download,” Rajni said. “FindMe. It uses the GPS to keep track of each other’s movements. I’ve used it on school trips.” Supposedly it used up lots of data but it had saved Rajni from losing other people’s children, so the disadvantages were greatly outweighed by the benefits.

  Jezmeen stared at her nails and picked at a cuticle with her teeth. “Why do we need that?” she asked. “We’re going to be together all the time anyway.” She made it sound like a prison sentence.

  “It’s a big country,” Rajni replied. “A big, unpredictable country. It’s easy to get lost here.”

  “Isn’t that the point of coming to India?” Jezmeen asked, nodding at the European couple in the pool. They were both floating on their backs now and gently flipping their toes. “To get lost? And then find ourselves again?”

  Oh, you want to argue. This was what Mum would say if any of them were being contrary—it was a warning against proceeding any further with their case, whether it was extending a curfew or picking a quarrel for the sake of it, which was Jezmeen’s specialty. Rajni had to bite her tongue to keep from saying the same thing to Anil whenever he questioned her.

  Jezmeen waved to somebody in the distance. “Hey, sleepyhead.”

  Shirina entered the foyer wearing a brilliant turquoise caftan and white espadrille sandals that crisscrossed her slender ankles. It was the other women in the café who turned to stare. That was the difference between her two sisters, Rajni observed. Men looked at Jezmeen and hungered after her long legs; women took note of the details that assembled petite Shirina like a doll—the shiny shoulder-length hair, the bracelet that matched the bag.

  And that ring! Rajni couldn’t help staring as if it was the first time she’d noticed it. Had Shirina’s diamond gotten bigger? Her white-gold wedding band sparkled as well, but the diamond engagement ring looked like something you saw on the news after a successful archaeological dig. Tacky, she’d thought immediately after seeing it the first time, even though she knew just how many carats it was worth. Shirina hadn’t said anything, of course; Rajni had looked up “huge diamond ring” on the internet and trawled through pictures until she found one that matched, and then looked up its value. If it was true that a man spent three months’ salary on the engagement ring, then Sehaj was making very good money indeed—but then, they all knew that already. The heir to one of Australia’s largest family-owned property businesses was not going to skimp on accessories for his fiancée.

  “All caught up on your sleep?” Jezmeen asked.

  “I’m getting there,” Shirina said. As she settled at the table, Rajni noticed dark circles under her eyes. “Nice hotel, Raj,” Shirina said, looking around. “It’s pretty quiet here.”

  “I’m so glad somebody appreciates my efforts,” Rajni said, giving Jezmeen a pointed look.

  “That’s a lovely dress,” Jezmeen said, but Rajni noticed her studying Shirina as well. There was a small slump in her shoulders that the bright caftan could not disguise.

  “Thanks,” Shirina said. “I’m afraid it takes me a while to get over the jet lag, so if I sneak off for anot
her nap, don’t mind me.”

  “As long as you’re up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to serve at the temple,” Jezmeen said.

  “That early?” Shirina asked.

  “She’s exaggerating,” Rajni said. “We’ll get up when we get up.”

  “Okay,” said Shirina.

  “No later than nine, though,” Rajni added. “So how’s it all going, Shirina? You’ve been so quiet on Facebook.”

  “I don’t really do social media anymore,” Shirina said with a shrug.

  Being a school principal, Rajni wasn’t crazy about it either but she used it to keep up with old friends and she found that Shirina had suddenly stopped posting pictures and status updates. Her last activity was a condolence message on her wall from an old classmate dated the day after Mum’s funeral. “How’s work?”

  “It’s good,” Shirina said quickly. “Very busy lately. I’m glad to have some time off.”

  “Oh,” Rajni said. That explained the dark circles, then. She waited for Shirina to say more but she was leaning toward Jezmeen and staring right at her chest.

  “Is that a new tattoo, Jez?” Shirina asked.

  Jezmeen grinned and nodded. She pulled down the neck of her tank top to reveal a black letter Z with vines and tiny flowers woven through it. For heaven’s sakes, Rajni thought. “I’d been thinking about getting it ever since I made the name change official, but I didn’t know where to get it.”

  “ ‘Where’ as in the tattoo parlor or ‘where’ on your body?” Shirina asked.

  “Where on my body,” Jezmeen said. “I didn’t want it to be too obvious, like on my forearm or something. Then I thought about some really secret places, like my inner thigh, but I wanted it to be a little more visible than that.”

  “Ouch. Inner thigh,” Shirina said, wincing.

  “I like this spot,” Jezmeen said. She kept her neckline low. Rajni couldn’t help herself.

  “You need to be a little careful, Jezmeen,” she said. She knew what she sounded like and she didn’t care.

  “Oh, the instruments were all sterile. This was the same guy who did my first two tats.”