The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  According to Google Maps, the Golden Temple was a straight line from their hotel. In practice, the sisters had to edge their way in single file along the narrow road, dodging rickshaws, potholes, and stray dogs. The rattling aluminum doors of shops were just being raised for the day as Shirina, Rajni, and Jezmeen made their way to the temple. Shirina had never seen so much Sikh paraphernalia in her life: T-shirts with glittery SIKH WARRIOR slogans embossed on them and screen-printed images of the Gurus, as if they were rock stars. One roadside stand was dedicated to selling karas, the silver bangles that Sikhs wore. A mother of two young boys made them hold out their wrists so the vendor could gauge their size. The older boy was reluctant. He shrugged when the vendor asked which kara he liked. “No opinion?” the vendor asked, laughing. He picked through the bangles displayed on a crate draped with velvet cloth. “Don’t you want everybody to know you’re a Sikh boy?” He held out a chunky kara, the kind Shirina had only seen on men, and the boy’s eyes widened a bit with interest.

  Shirina felt the coolness of her thin bangle against her wrist. She had worn the same kara since she was a teenager. Mum had helped to remove her previous kara from childhood, which had grown so tight that soap and hand lotion were required to ease the removal. It hurt, Shirina remembered, especially at the point where her wrist bone jutted out and then widened to become her hand. “Make a fist,” Mum kept saying, tugging the bangle. “Good girl, good girl.” Praise worked on her and reduced the pain to an irritation. Shirina made a fist so tight that her fingernails dug into the soft flesh of her palms and drew blood. She was doing it now, clenching her fist just at the memory.

  “Cool,” Jezmeen said as they passed a shopfront window with a gleaming display of knives and swords of different sizes. Mum had had a medium-sized kirpan with an intricately carved handle and a blade that curved at the tip. It was purely decorative, the symbolism more important than the function, but Shirina still remembered feeling protected by it.

  Jezmeen pointed at the largest kirpan, which stretched across the table in the shop window. “Imagine bringing that back to Britain and trying to explain it to Customs.”

  “Mum’s was about that size, wasn’t it?”

  Jezmeen shook her head. “I think she had one of those necklaces,” she said, nodding at the small sword-shaped pendants that hung from long silver chains. Noticing their sudden attention on the pendants, the vendor plucked a few from the display case and came out of the shop to offer them to Shirina. She shook her head. “Mum had one just like that,” she insisted, pointing at a dagger with a glinting tip. It looked like a prop from a play.

  “You’re probably thinking about Auntie Roopi’s house,” Jezmeen said. “She had lots of decorative stuff from trips abroad.”

  In her memories, Shirina saw the kirpan sitting next to a carved vase on a mantel and realized that Jezmeen must be right. Their own house had been sparsely decorated—a commemorative glass ornament here, a few picture frames there. She remembered the plastic lilies that Mum had brought home from the supermarket once, cloudy blobs of glue attempting a dewy freshness in the dead of winter. The curtains were always drawn anyway, so the lilies did nothing to brighten up the shadowy room. Since Jezmeen mentioned Auntie Roopi at the market in Delhi, Shirina found herself confusing memories of both places. That cat wasn’t theirs, but if she recalled her childhood now, she saw it creeping between the furniture of their house and stretching lazily at the foot of her bed. Auntie Roopi’s house had been more welcoming than her own—the kitchen pantry bursting with packets of biscuits, the countertops clear of those bills with angry red letters at the top that sometimes made Mum cry.

  The sisters ambled down two more lanes, politely declining offers of chai and roti from the vendors, and emerged into the main square, where the skies were open and the vehicles were barred from entering. Rickshaws crowded at the edges of the square, their drivers calling out prices to passengers. “Wow, this has changed,” Rajni said as they stepped into the square. “It’s so civilized now.”

  Shirina hadn’t been here before but even she was impressed. The town square was neatly paved in reddish brick. The surrounding buildings all had a uniform exterior and they stood in tidy rows, unlike the jutting houses and shops everywhere else in the city. The blaring of horns and sputtering motors already seemed a world away. Two sculptures side by side caught Shirina’s attention: a wedding dancing scene. One sculpture depicted the men, their legs raised high and their arms framing the sky above them. The women on the other platform were huddled closer together. Their dupattas were caught in the wind of their movements, trailing behind them as if they were softer than the iron and concrete materials that composed them.

  “Looks like your wedding, Shirina,” Jezmeen said, nodding at the statues. “I think our outfits were a little more up-to-date, though.”

  The women looked young, like sisters and cousins of the bride. Shirina remembered Rajni and Jezmeen dancing with her, and the photographer circling like a vulture, freezing the moment just like these statues did. In the pictures, the unbridled joy in their smiles gave them the strongest resemblance Shirina had ever seen. They looked like three sisters that had spent their whole lives laughing together like this.

  “Do you remember all those old women who wanted to sing those dreary songs about brides leaving their home?” Jezmeen asked. “And I kept turning up the music?”

  “Those songs are horrible,” Rajni said. “They did them at my wedding and Mum didn’t let me stop the women. They sounded like cats dying.”

  The songs were designed to stir up the bride’s emotions and deepen her great sadness at leaving her family for the unknown. Shirina had been dreading them as well, and was glad that the festive mood continued despite the elders’ insistence that traditions needed to be respected. Those women didn’t have much say anyway; they were part of that hodgepodge of guests that Mum invited from her temple crowd to make up for their distinct lack of relatives compared to Sehaj’s voluminous family. The mournful songs just weren’t relevant to Shirina, and she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to feign the appropriate bridal sadness. Once she found Sehaj and her new, perfect family, she was so prepared to jump ship that she would have done away with the good-byes altogether.

  Jezmeen and Rajni were recalling the words of those songs now as they walked along the square, passing more souvenir shops, dhabas, tour booking agencies, and a double-story McDonald’s. “There was one verse which went, ‘Make sure you do all the cooking and cleaning to the utmost standards, you don’t want to anger your mother-in-law,’ ” Rajni said.

  Jezmeen pulled a face. “They need an update,” she said. “Make sure your husband does his share of the work and tell your mother-in-law to bugger off if she interferes.”

  Shirina had an image of her mother-in-law hovering around the background yesterday while Sehaj spoke to her on the phone. It was easy to say, wasn’t it? Before getting married, young women always went on about how they wouldn’t put up with this or that. The arranged marriage message boards were full of such threads. “HELP!! MIL wants to move in with us!” and “Any advice on how to say no to MIL without upsetting hubby?” The women who posted these frantic messages irked Shirina because by posting their private problems to a group of strangers, they were indulging in drama that they could have foreseen by marrying traditional men. You should have known, Shirina was tempted to say. It wasn’t just to chide the women—it was a useful reminder to herself as well that she had wanted a traditional marriage. Although she hadn’t exactly gone searching for a live-in mother-in-law, she welcomed the idea once she noted the size of the house, with enough rooms between them. Compromises were necessary. It was easy as well to declare, “I would never quit my job” or “I’d tell my husband that my needs came first.” But what women really did, the ways in which they bent and adjusted their values—that was reality. The women on those message boards should know better than to complain about a simple fact of life like overbearing mothers-in-law.<
br />
  Across the square, a massive flat screen imposed on one of the heritage buildings showed the inside of the Golden Temple. The prayers boomed across a public address system. On the screen, a bearded granthi sang the hymns dutifully, the camera so close to his face that Shirina could see the creases lining his skin. She felt small, in that way that Mum probably intended for them on this leg of the pilgrimage—insignificant. The weight of Sehaj’s request for Shirina faded away. It was just a moment, a speck in her history. There was so much to look forward to. She would tell Sehaj this when she had the next chance, echoing what he had said all along. “I just have to get through these next couple of days and then I’ll be home,” she would say.

  At the stairs that led to the entrance of the grounds of the Golden Temple, a tour guide held court for a group of tourists who wore backpacks and used their hands to shield their eyes from the bright sunlight amplified by the pure white stone of the walls and buildings that made up the surrounding complex. “We go down these stairs and descend into the grounds,” he explained. “This is intentional. The motion of going down rather than up instills humbleness and eliminates arrogance from our minds.” Two turbaned warrior guards wearing regal-blue garments stood on either side of the entrance. Shirina dipped her feet in the trough of water and climbed the stairs, leaving wet footprints on the marble surface. She listened to the tour guide as if she was part of the group. He went on about the Golden Temple’s history—its significance as the most sacred place of worship for Sikhs, the entrances which could be seen from every angle, inviting people from all faiths. “The fourth Sikh Guru, Guru Ram Das, excavated a tank, which is this large pool of water. It became known as Amritsar, the Pool of the Nectar of Immortality. The holy city grew around it and took on the same name. The shrine was built in the center of the pool and became the center of Sikhism in the world.” The tourists nodded and uttered small acknowledgments of wonder—“Ahh!” “Oh!” Their phones captured snapshots of the unsmiling guards holding their tall spears and staring straight ahead.

  Then the tour guide stopped talking. Shirina understood why—the sight of the golden shrine literally took his breath away. She wondered if this was a performance. Surely after visiting every day, it would grow old? But that blissful smile on his face seemed to reflect the stunning vision of that majestic golden jewel which appeared to float on the calm water. White marble floors and a complex of low-pillared buildings ran across the edges of the palatial grounds which surrounded it on all sides. The temple’s intricately carved gilded domes glinted in the sun. Here, the sky seemed wider and bluer than anywhere Shirina had been, and it seemed like some divine trick that the temple was both immense and welcoming.

  Shirina had only ever seen the Golden Temple in pictures, but they couldn’t do justice to this view. In their home, Mum had a framed poster of the temple on the living-room wall—the only thing that hung on the wall besides a portrait of Guru Nanak surrounded by garlands and votive candles. Shirina was only about five years old when she had asked Mum, “Whose house is that?” Mum had laughed. “That’s God’s house,” she’d said. “God lives there.” And then she looked at it with such yearning that Shirina saw what she saw. Compared to their old couches and cracked windows, God’s house was much better. Shirina had always understood Mum’s longing for another home—it was a powerful sentiment that they shared but never spoke about. When Shirina announced to her family that she had met somebody and was going to marry him, she sensed the questions brewing in her sisters’ minds. Why didn’t you say anything? Why are you going so far away? Mum was the only one who didn’t seem surprised.

  Rajni led the way, barefoot, along the edges of the water. A long strip of carpet ran along the path to the temple. If she stepped off the carpet, her feet would make contact with the heat-soaked tiles. Ahead of her there were two children playing, nudging each other off the carpet as they tried to maintain their balance. From their play, Rajni understood that the marble floor took on the heat of lava in their imaginations. They stepped on and off, giggling and squealing. She felt an ache in her chest, thinking of Anil, and how much she had wanted him to have a sibling. How strangely incomplete her family always felt, as if there was a ghostly presence of something that never existed. Was that why he was so eager to start a family of his own? Had he always been lonely? She couldn’t ask him those questions now. This morning, she trawled through her social media pages and found that they had been scrubbed clean of any traces of Anil. He had deleted and blocked her. It was strange how visceral and effective the pain of an online snub could be. Any small amount of guilt or doubt that Rajni felt over hiring that private investigator was gone now.

  They continued their slow walk toward the temple, passing the men’s bathing area of the sarovar. A screen blocked off the view but when the men emerged from the pool and stood up to put their clothes back on, their heads and feet were visible behind the screen. There was an air of celebration to the whole ritual—they patted each other on the back and called out.

  “We’re not going in there, are we?” Jezmeen asked.

  “There’s a separate bathing area for women,” Rajni said. “I think it’s over there.” She pointed at a bathhouse ahead under the shade of a tree with outstretched branches, where women were lining up with their belongings neatly tucked under their arms. Another stream of women exited the bathhouse, their actions not quite as congratulatory as the men’s. Rajni wondered if this was because their bath was private whereas the men—save for the screen—were out in the open. Their purification was on display for the whole world to see.

  As they got closer to the temple, the line of people thickened and the spaces became narrower. From what Rajni could see, there were two or three rows for lining up. One line seemed to move much faster than the others but it was the slow line that most people wanted to be in. “I don’t get what’s going on,” she muttered.

  “Feels like we’re at a nightclub,” Jezmeen said.

  A gray-haired woman in front of them turned around and explained: “This line is for tourists. The people who just want to come inside, see the temple, and go. You move right through. The other line is for devotees to sit down. It takes longer to get through.”

  “So . . . the express line, then?” Jezmeen asked. “We don’t have to sit in there, do we? We just want to pay respects.”

  “I guess so,” Rajni said, although she bristled slightly at being called a tourist. Tourists enjoyed themselves and brought home useless plastic souvenirs. They were here for spiritual purification—nothing about this trip felt like a holiday to her. She was beginning to feel the weight of returning to the past. Fragments of memories of her last trip with Mum here were surfacing and becoming more difficult to ignore now that they were in Punjab, where it all started.

  They moved into the quicker line. It was managed by a man at the front who counted bodies, let them in quickly, and then suddenly snapped the bar back in place. The people moved like floodwater rushing into every little space. The sudden crush of bodies alarmed Rajni; instinctively, she reached out for Jezmeen and Shirina, grabbing their hands.

  “Can everybody just relax?” Jezmeen said irritably. Nobody appeared to hear her. Rajni felt the pressure of the crowd behind her and the barrier ahead. It was getting hotter; sweat broke across her upper lip but her arms were pinned to her sides by the other pressing bodies. She tipped her head up and took a gulp of air.

  When they were eventually allowed into the temple, the procession was calmer. The desperation that Rajni felt from the crowd seemed to dissipate once they were let through. She checked over her shoulders to make sure Jezmeen and Shirina were following behind. Jezmeen was looking out over the water, its calm and glassy surface. Shirina’s forehead was set into a deep frown.

  It’s not supposed to be this way, Rajni thought. She had known better than to come into this pilgrimage with too many expectations, but she thought Amritsar would be different. It was beautiful, certainly; the temple was nothing short
of breathtaking. But now she and her sisters were being shuttled into the prayer hall, a room dripping with ornate gold trimmings, the sounds of hymns reverberating against the high ceilings. And all she could think was: How long do we have here?

  It was like a theme-park ride where the wait was infinite but the ride itself only lasted under a minute and left everybody wondering why on earth they had anticipated it so much. They were ejected from the room almost as soon as they entered. “Can’t we sit?” Rajni asked. The current of the crowd carried her and her request out of the hall. Shirina and Jezmeen looked just as dazed when they emerged.

  “Is that it?” Rajni asked.

  “I suppose so,” Jezmeen said. “Unless you want to go back and line up again.”

  Rajni barely heard her. She was remembering saying those same words to the doctors when they told her that there was nothing left to do in Mum’s case. “So that’s it?” she’d asked, over and over again until they could give her a different answer. She wasn’t just talking about the cancer; she was shocked that Mum’s life would just . . . end. After all those arguments, all those conflicts, she would cease to exist.

  Jezmeen and Shirina stepped in front of Rajni and led the way back to the women’s bathhouse. Rajni was still deep in thought, this time recalling a visit to the hospital and seeing the anguish on Mum’s face. “Rajni, please press play on the iPad,” Mum had whispered when the pain passed and she could speak again. Anil had helped her to stream the daily prayers from the Golden Temple and their messages rang across the room from the tinny iPad speakers. “I’ve got the Bluetooth speakers at home,” he’d said anxiously to Rajni. “I can go get them and then she’ll have, like, surround sound and it’ll be more relaxing or whatever.” Rajni had told him to go ahead, what a lovely idea. She needed time alone with Mum that day.