The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  “It’s not right,” Jezmeen agreed. “There can’t be any valid reason for it either.”

  “Those are the rules, though,” Shirina said. Rajni noticed she looked more tired than yesterday, but her insistent response made her seem more awake all of a sudden.

  “That doesn’t mean the rules make any sense,” Jezmeen said.

  “Maybe it’s just how it’s always been done,” Shirina said.

  “You’re saying that if somebody told us we couldn’t scatter Mum’s ashes just because we’re women, it would be okay?” Rajni asked.

  “It wouldn’t be okay, but it would be the thing to do,” Shirina said. “Some things just are what they are.”

  Jezmeen looked taken aback. “But—” Rajni said.

  “We respect traditions, don’t we? Or do we just pick and choose the ones we like?” Rajni hadn’t seen Shirina speaking with such passion before. “What do you want?” she challenged Jezmeen. “Do you want to start looking for inequalities in every little thing? Because it’s a very long list and you’ll never get through it.”

  Rajni and Jezmeen exchanged a look. What had got into Shirina? They walked in silence for a while. A loud announcement broke Rajni’s thoughts. It was the daily hymn being read and broadcast. An echo reverberated strongly with each syllable, making the words unclear. Mum used to turn on the radio to listen to the broadcast every morning. Like Sikhs all over the world, she waited for this daily guidance on how to go about her life. The Golden Temple was the beating heart at the center of the Sikh world, sending a vital message into thousands of homes in Britain and elsewhere. As the pain in Rajni’s ankle went from a niggling sensation to something more noticeable, she wished making the pain vanish was as easy as reciting the Lord’s name. It didn’t hurt to try. With the next few steps she took, she said his name. Despite her doubt, she thought the steps were a little easier to take.

  Preparations for breakfast had started before the sun came up, so by the time Jezmeen arrived in the Golden Temple’s kitchen with her sisters, it was crowded with volunteers. Elderly ladies sat on mats and split garlic with their thumbs, discarding the papery skins onto a spread of newspapers. A circle of men tended to the massive machinery that took balls of dough through a conveyer belt and flattened them into rotis. Jezmeen, Shirina, and Rajni stood on the edges of the kitchen like new students in the cafeteria, unsure of where they were needed. It was only when a group of European backpackers descended on the kitchen and scattered among the different stations in a flurry of sandalwood-scented dreadlocks that Jezmeen realized nobody expected anything of them. She joined the women who were washing dishes that were already piling in from the early morning crowd. Rajni followed her. Shirina went to the farthest corner of the kitchen—as far away from the two of them as she could manage.

  As they settled into a routine, Jezmeen turned to Rajni. “Something’s going on with our little sister,” she said. “What was that outburst about?”

  Rajni peered at Shirina, who was settling on a stool with some women peeling potatoes. She smiled and nodded at the women, who made space for her and handed her a peeler and pushed a pile of potatoes in her direction. “Don’t know. It was strange, though.”

  “She seems unhappy—she started confiding in me yesterday but I could tell she was holding back. I think she’s really dreading going on that trip to the village. She looks tired too, doesn’t she? She seems preoccupied all the time.”

  Rajni dunked a steel plate into the soapy water and handed it to Jezmeen to rinse. “Family visits to the village are never fun,” she said. “The novelty wears off after a couple of hours when everybody stops parading you about. At least she’s not single. I was fifteen, and every other day, some auntie or another was remarking on how I would be a good bride.”

  “What did Mum say to that?” Jezmeen asked.

  Rajni hesitated. “She didn’t object, let’s just say that.”

  “You were fifteen!”

  “Yeah, and Mum was desperate to please her relatives.”

  “Why?”

  Rajni hesitated again. “The usual pressures to impress the family in the old country, show them that we’re not that far removed from our culture.” Rajni concentrated very hard on scrubbing a spot off a steel cup. It looked as if there was more she wanted to say but she was refraining.

  “Should we talk to Shirina?” Jezmeen asked. “Sit her down and ask her what’s going on? Maybe she’ll be more honest with you.”

  “Why would she be more honest with me?” Rajni asked. “You two are closer in age.”

  “But you’re married,” Jezmeen said. “Didn’t you deal with all this in-law stuff when you married Kabir? You had some visits and obligations, didn’t you?” She just remembered Rajni having to touch the feet of Kabir’s relatives when she entered their home for the first time, and standing behind her sister, Jezmeen had felt a rush of indignity. She would never touch anybody’s feet. “I’m never getting married,” Jezmeen had declared to the laughter of Kabir’s relatives. Mum was positively aghast with her statement.

  “I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to,” Rajni informed Jezmeen. “I could always say no.”

  “I’m getting the sense that Shirina doesn’t have that luxury,” Jezmeen said. She watched Shirina sitting with her legs crossed, her head bent to her task. She was methodically peeling potatoes and setting them aside in a neat pile instead of tossing them into a basket like the other women. Every movement of hers seemed slow and calculated, like she was attempting a role.

  “What do you think of Sehaj?” Jezmeen asked Rajni.

  Rajni looked at her curiously. “Why are you asking?”

  “I just never got a sense of who he was. The whole engagement and wedding happened so quickly.”

  “That’s how Shirina wanted it, though,” Rajni pointed out. “I’m sure she had to adjust to a few things but everyone does that in marriage.” Rajni dunked her hands into the soapy water, thinking. “Although there was something weird the other day in the café.”

  “What was it?”

  “Probably nothing, but I told her about how Mum used to prescribe all these fertility remedies for me, and she was really interested. Your message came soon after that, so I didn’t really follow up on it—and maybe there’s no reason to—but I did wonder if she and Sehaj are trying to have a baby. Maybe it’s not going so well. I gained weight and was pretty depressed as well after my miscarriages, you know.”

  “Should we ask her about it, then?”

  “I certainly didn’t want to be asked about it,” Rajni said. “It’s such a sensitive subject, infertility. See if she brings it up first.”

  Rajni shifted positions and winced visibly. “Is it your ankle again?” Jezmeen asked. On the walk, Rajni had paused twice to massage her ankle. She grimaced and nodded at Jezmeen. “I don’t know why it’s hurting so much. I’ve landed on it heavily plenty of times before.”

  “We’re in a different place,” Jezmeen said with a shrug.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

  “Doesn’t your body just change when you’re in a new environment? Your hair becomes coarser or softer, your eyes are drier, your dreams are weirder and more colorful?”

  “Maybe,” Rajni said. “I guess it’ll just heal by itself when I get back to London, then.”

  “Or you could try bathing in the sarovar again,” Jezmeen said. “I’m going to go back in later. I’m starting to think it really does have the power to heal.”

  “Oh, please, Jezmeen.”

  “What?”

  “You know it’s not going to help. It’s just water.”

  “Go in there with a little bit of faith and maybe you’ll see some results. The water is called the nectar of immortality, after all.”

  “Figuratively.”

  Jezmeen rolled her eyes. “I know, Rajni. I don’t think a dip in a pool is going to magically make my life eternal.” But as she said it, she felt a little sad that this was the t
ruth.

  “All your gushing over the benefits of a healing bath makes you sound like Mum,” Rajni said. “She would have convinced herself to will away the cancer if we’d let her. Honestly, I thought you were a bigger skeptic than this. Has the pilgrimage changed you?”

  “It’s nice to have something to believe in,” Jezmeen said. “Otherwise, I don’t know what we’re all doing here. Do you?”

  “We’re here because Mum wanted us to be.”

  “I don’t mean here, as in the kitchen of the Golden Temple. I’m talking about here. Our existence. What’s the meaning of it all?” Jezmeen surprised herself with the question. She had never articulated it before but it had been nagging at her since the Arowana incident. She’d always hoped to be immortalized through her work; instead, she was best known for her biggest mistake.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I just want to get through each day at this stage.”

  Now Rajni was the one who was beginning to sound like Mum. All that sighing, all that lamenting about how life was not how she’d expected it.

  “Aren’t you curious at all about what happens after all of this? Don’t you do things and wonder why you’re doing them at all?” Jezmeen persisted.

  Rajni turned and gave her a very sharp stare. “If I thought about the higher purpose of everything I did, I’d get nothing done. I’d go through all my days like Mum, doing rituals that made no difference, and making a hobby out of prayer because she was so convinced that the afterlife held more promise and less disappointment than this world.”

  “You make Mum sound so bitter,” Jezmeen pointed out. “She wasn’t eager to die just so she could escape this world.”

  “Why did she ask us to help her to die, then?” Rajni asked.

  “Raj, that was because she was suffering,” Jezmeen said. Tears welled up in her eyes. “And as I recall, you didn’t exactly hesitate.”

  “I wanted to help Mum in whatever way I could,” Rajni said. “I didn’t think I’d have nightmares about her death for this long.”

  Jezmeen stared at Rajni. So she dreamed of Mum too? Rajni had gone back to scrubbing plates. Her face was tense with anger and she was putting too much force into her motions. This was how she had looked that day in the hospital, when Mum had shooed them out of the room and Jezmeen marched toward the nurses’ station, insisting that they inform somebody. Rajni caught Jezmeen by the shoulder, and told her to stop. “Let go of me,” Jezmeen shouted, jerking away. She waved down a nurse who was passing by. “Excuse me,” she said. Then Jezmeen saw Rajni’s fist coming almost in slow motion, and then the bolt of pain soared across her cheek and time sped up rapidly. Shirina backed against the wall, her hands clapped over her mouth and her eyes wide with shock. The nurse rushed to separate them and then they were ordered to leave the hospital.

  The next day, Jezmeen didn’t answer any of Rajni’s calls. A purple bruise shone just under her eye, and as she tenderly patted concealer over it, the calls kept coming until her phone battery died. Get the hint, she thought. An apology was not going to fix this. Finally, when she went to plug in her phone charger, she saw a message from Rajni: “Pick up the phone. It’s about Mum.”

  When they went to take Mum’s things, Jezmeen was still hoping that she had just passed away in her sleep, her prayers answered. Yet she still had dreams of Mum opening that jewelry case and taking those pills, one by one, like small pieces of candy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Back in November

  Sita is sitting upright in her hospital bed, having just read the letter to her daughters. She folds it up neatly and sets it on her lap, satisfied. There is nothing more to say, but she clears her throat, only to fill the taut silence.

  As she expected, Jezmeen is staring at her in horror. If it were up to that girl, everybody would live forever and growing up would be unnecessary. Jezmeen belongs in a movie, preserved within the confines of a screen and replayed over and over again, so that in ten, twenty years, she won’t have aged at all. Rajni, on the other hand, is nodding. Sita takes this as a good sign. Even though she and Rajni have discussed this option privately before, she has been nervous about how Rajni would react once it became a reality. Shirina’s forehead is creased with worry lines and she’s looking back and forth between her sisters.

  “You’re sure you have enough?” Rajni asks. She is speaking very softly, although Sita is quite sure that the woman in the next bed is partially deaf. She can tell from the volume of her radio every evening at 6 P.M., when she listens to the BBC news.

  Jezmeen turns to Rajni. “You’re not actually going to let her go through with this, are you?”

  Rajni and Sita exchange a look, which Jezmeen catches. “Jezmeen, she’s suffering,” Rajni says. “She wants to put an end to it. We—she—has clearly been thinking about this for some time.”

  It’s that small slip that Jezmeen catches. Sita winces, but not with pain. She knows now that Rajni will have to explain what she meant by “we.” She will have to explain that once Sita was given the diagnosis, she knew what kind of suffering lay in store for her and she was not interested in clinging on to this life while her body deteriorated. “What can I do?” she had asked Rajni, and Rajni had pulled up some websites, did some research on places in Europe where Sita could go to end her life with dignity. They downloaded brochures and made a hopeful project of Sita’s assisted suicide, until reality sank in. The costs would be astronomical. The small sum from the sale of her London home that Sita wanted to leave behind for her daughters and her grandson would be swallowed up by this final act, and she didn’t want that. She had spent so much of her life scraping by, and there was no reason to splurge on her death. “Isn’t there a simpler way?” Sita asked Rajni. How did people end their lives peacefully if they couldn’t book into a clinic in Switzerland? Even before her diagnosis, Sita had always thought of death as a wave washing over the person, lulling them to sleep. The thought of settling into her bed and sinking into a deep, tranquil state was even more enticing now that the pain kept her awake most nights.

  Then she remembered the sleeping pills! The nurses gave them to her before bed each night. Sita could stockpile them, put up with agonizing sleepless nights for an eventual reward of eternal peaceful sleep. She is only telling her daughters about it because she doesn’t want it to come as a shock to them. She also needs them to keep a lookout for anybody who might stop this from happening. It’s important that they are uninterrupted.

  “Try to understand, beti,” Sita says. She reaches a trembling hand out to Jezmeen, hoping to connect with her. “I’m not getting any better.”

  “They haven’t said all hope is lost. Nobody actually said that you’re going to die,” Jezmeen says.

  Sita and Rajni share the same sigh. It surprises Sita and she can tell that Rajni has noticed too, how they responded with an identical action. “They’ve given every indication that Mum’s not going to recover. The cancer is spreading and chemo has stopped being effective. That means—”

  “It means there’s a chance of a miracle happening,” Jezmeen said. “You hear about people springing to recovery from the most dire illnesses—cancer, comas. There are people with paralysis who start walking again. It can happen.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Shirina says quietly.

  Sita is thankful for her youngest daughter then, even though she has only just flown over, having been warned by Rajni that Sita’s days are numbered. Nevertheless, even she understands that Jezmeen’s hope is naive and it’s not based on any faith. Jezmeen doesn’t think God is going to help Sita. She’s hoping for a medical miracle, some unexplained glitch that works in Sita’s favor at the last minute. This is a foolish way to look at things, but wasn’t Jezmeen the one who struggled with her father’s death in the same way? Even though Sita explained that he was with God, Jezmeen repeatedly spent years convincing herself that her father hadn’t actually died. At age twelve, she devoted herself to a great deal of research about people who faked their
own deaths for various reasons. Sita remembers getting upset with Jezmeen for telling her about a man in America who staged an accidental fall off a cliff during a family camping trip. Years later, his wife’s friend living in another town spotted him in the background of a picture in a news clipping about a local school fund-raiser. He had been alive all that time, and enjoying life very much with his new family. “Don’t be so stupid,” Sita snapped at Jezmeen. It was bad enough to be saddled with her husband’s unfinished business—it was quite another thing to imagine that he might be in another town somewhere, enjoying a redo of his life while Sita tried to figure out how to make ends meet.

  “Why tell us, then?” Jezmeen asks. “If your mind is made up.”

  “I don’t want it to come as a shock to you,” Sita says. “And I want you to be by my side when I do it.” She hesitates. “You need to make sure you do the pilgrimage in my letter, you take that bath in the sarovar, and you do a lot of seva.”

  The wave of shame covering Sita is all-encompassing. What she wants to do, God will not be pleased about. Suicide is frowned upon in their religion. What kind of person throws their life away? She thought about this every time she put away another pill and she did her best not to let the guilt overcome her. Life is meant to be cherished, not carelessly wasted or ended, and she knows that, but isn’t her life already being wasted? Isn’t waiting to die as good as dying, and actually even worse because she’s simply taking up space on earth? She has many arguments to present to God when they eventually meet, and none fully satisfy her, but this she knows: her daughters will have time to absolve themselves. If they help her by keeping a lookout, they can spend their whole lives redeeming themselves in the eyes of God. They can start with the pilgrimage—service to others, cleansing themselves, taking an arduous journey to a spiritual peak. It’s all outlined in her letter.