Rani and Sukh

by Bali Rai

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Beginning . . .

  The moon gave . . .

  Leicester

  Sukh

  Rani

  Rani

  Sukh

  Rani

  Rani

  Rani

  Sukh

  Rani

  Sukh

  Rani

  Rani

  Moranwali, Punjab Early 1960s

  In a square . . .

  Resham Bains sat . . .

  You are my . . .

  Gianni-ji lit the . . .

  Billah spent the . . .

  Gianni-ji sat, cross-legged . . .

  The Bainses’ house . . .

  Gulbir Bains heard . . .

  Leicester

  Rani

  Sukh

  Rani

  Natalie & Sukh

  Six Months Later

  Rani

  Rani

  Rani

  Sukh

  Rani

  Sukh

  Rani

  Rani

  Rani

  Rani

  Rani

  Sukh

  Divy

  Rani

  The Next Day

  Resham

  Natalie & Sukh

  Divy

  Sukh

  Divy

  Rani

  Resham

  Rani

  New York Two Years Later

  She crossed the . . .

  About the Author

  Also by Bali Rai

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘Man, she’s wicked like one of them Bollywood actresses . . .’

  Sukh reckons Rani is the most fanciable girl in school. She’s got just the kind of look he goes for . . .

  Rani can’t stop thinking about Sukh either. Talk about fit. Beautiful amber-brown eyes, like pools you could jump into . . .

  But Rani is a Sandhu, and Sukh is a Bains – and sometimes names can lead to terrible trouble . . .

  A powerful and gripping novel that sweeps the reader from modern-day Britain to the Punjab in the 1960s and back again in a ceaseless cycle of tragedy and conflict.

  RANI & SUKH

  BALI RAI

  Thank you to all the usual suspects, Penny, Jennifer;

  and to Gooch, Bind and Divy Heer

  for all the parents’ evenings and stuff

  (and for calling me Professor Balthazar!).

  I wouldn’t have been able to write this book without

  the support, input and love of Jasmine Powdrill,

  to whom I’d like to dedicate it.

  You will wear suntan lotion . . . Love you. XXX

  BEGINNING . . .

  THE MOON GAVE off a silvery haze, barely highlighting the path ahead. Towards the north, the track led down to the centre of the village, leading into narrow lanes and gullies of one- and two-storey dwellings daubed in lime and fuchsia, with vines and creepers edging their green fingers across the walls. To the south lay open fields, rice paddies sweltering in the heat, long-standing grasses and ears of corn swathed in darkness; and freedom.

  She stood for a moment and tried to get her bearings. Screams rang through her head. Screams and then laughter, one following the other. Accusations and exclamations. Memories flashed by. Her beloved. The muscles that rippled through his skin, the soft golden-brown hairs that covered his chest. She shivered as she recalled his gentle caress. His creamy clouded skin, so soft, so different from that of any other man she had ever seen. Hazel eyes that shone and sparkled with the promise of love. For ever . . .

  She shuddered and moved on, heading south, fearful that her father was behind her. Maybe her brothers too – with their crimson-covered hands, cudgels swinging. She moved quickly despite the darkness, every step taken from memory – years of walking this same way, to take roti and dhal out to her father and her brothers as they toiled in the heat of the midday sun, ploughing and planting and tending and harvesting. Late-night trips before bed time that eventually became clandestine meetings with him . . .

  Now, as she fled the wrath of her family, she recalled nothing of the warmth and love and joy that had formed her fifteen years on Earth. She felt only anger and fear. And deep inside, as some invisible hand forced her on, nestled just above the forming head of her unborn child, she felt a stabbing, cloying pain which threatened to sap the strength from her bones and the will from her heart. But she pushed on and on. And on . . .

  The well sat alone in the middle of a disused square of land, surrounded on all sides by tall grasses and hemp plants. The stone from which it had been built three hundred years earlier appeared shiny and almost metallic under the moonlight. Everything round about sat in utter darkness yet the well stood out, as if it were an omen. She stood barely five paces from it, searching the night sky. Tears coursed their way down her cheeks as she tried and tried to make sense of what had happened. Why it had happened.

  ‘Das Menhu,’ she implored her maker. ‘Tell me why . . . ?’

  She noticed a bright star, directly above her. Above the well. It was him. She knew it. Already he was waiting, just as he had always promised, in those stolen moments among the long ears of corn, and out here at the very spot where she stood.

  ‘If I go before you,’ he’d whispered to her, caressing her soft, naked belly, ‘then I will wait for you. Up there, in the sky.’

  ‘How will I find you, meri jaan?’ she’d replied.

  He’d smiled, his eyes sparkling. ‘You will find me up there, at night. The brightest of all the stars. Waiting for you.’

  ‘But we have our whole lives ahead of us.’

  ‘Tu heh, meri jaan,’ he’d told her, kissing her gently on the lips.

  Now she repeated his words to herself. You are my life. You are my life . . .

  And there he was, just as he had promised, above her head. High up in the Heavens. Awaiting her. She paused and considered how fate had played such a cruel trick on her, taking her heart away and leaving only a trace of him inside her. She held her belly and cried for her child. She looked up again, shedding more tears, an unstoppable flow now. He was still waiting.

  Meri jaan.

  She edged towards the well, sat on the wall and waited another moment or two. Long enough to tell her child that she loved it. Long enough to tell her beloved that she was on her way. Long enough to try and make recompense with her maker.

  ‘Meri maafi kaaro-ji,’ she cried. ‘Forgive me, my Lord.’

  And then she fell . . .

  LEICESTER

  SUKH

  ‘MAN, SHE’S WICKED. Like one of them Bollywood actresses. Fine.’

  Sukh was sitting on the steps that led up to the concrete tennis courts by the side of school, talking to one of his friends, Jaspal.

  Jaspal laughed and shook his head. ‘Rani? You know what her name means, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah – it means “queen”, don’t it?’

  ‘Exactly, Sukh. Queen. She probably loves herself, you get me?’

  ‘How can you say that when you don’t even know her, man?’

  Sukh shook his head and looked at Jas. What an arse. The boy didn’t even get the nasty girls in school checkin’ for him, never mind the fittest girl smiling – like she had at Sukh. Rani Sandhu. The wickedest girl in school. Smiling. At him. He couldn’t help it. He grinned to himself.

  Rani Sandhu was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had soft, creamy skin and hazel eyes flecked with green splinters, full of light and life. Her mouth was full, with beautiful lips that he had an urge to kiss whenever he saw them. Her hair was a honeyed shade of brown, straight and long. She looked
just like a Bollywood actress but she could also have passed for a Spanish girl. Or an Italian. She was the perfect height for Sukh, just a little shorter than him, with a voluptuous figure – the kind of look he loved.

  ‘You’re just jealous, Jas,’ said Sukh. ‘That green-eyed monster catch a hold of you.’

  ‘Sack that,’ laughed Jaspal. ‘She’s OK. Wouldn’t say she was anything special though.’

  Jas eyed a couple of girls walking by, one of them white, the other Asian, as his friend continued to bait him. ‘Yeah, I know you wouldn’t. The only girls smile at you are in Asian Babes. You know – naked and flat.’

  Sukh ducked the friendly punch that Jas threw his way, laughing at his own joke. Jas got up from the step and dusted off his D & G jeans, copied from the original cut at his father’s clothing factory. He looked down at Sukh.

  ‘Enoughing of ju shit, Sukhbinderjit,’ he said, in a piss-take of his dad’s Anglo-Asian accent.

  ‘Jealous?’ challenged Sukh.

  ‘Yeah, yeah. If you is so bad why don’t you go and chat to her? Get her digits for your phone?’ replied Jaspal.

  ‘What? And transport her to a flower garden in Kashmir, yeah? Like in them Bollywood films you love like they is your girlfriend?’

  ‘Piss off, man,’ answered Jas, looking embarrassed.

  ‘I can see it now. I walk over and smile at her as she’s standing giggling with her friends. She swoons and falls at my feet. Lies there for a second, panting and then – boom! – we’re in that garden, dancing round the roses, making eyes at each other, blowing kisses, while some old bag wails in Hindi and a thousand dancers appear from nowhere – and then the kiss . . . Yeah, I can see it now. She hides behind a tree and I try to find her, but she moves from tree to tree like something that . . . er . . . moves a lot, and then I catch her and just as we kiss the camera cuts to a shot of the bees landing on the flowers—’

  ‘You fool,’ replied Jas, laughing.

  ‘Better a fool than a wanker, Jas. Believe that.’

  Sukh ducked another punch before getting up and following Jas back into school for an afternoon of GCSE English and maths and thoughts of Rani Sandhu.

  RANI

  I WAS SITTING in my English lit. classroom waiting for the rest of my group to get there. I was practising my reading of Shakespeare so that I wouldn’t mess it up if I got asked to read out loud. Not like my best friend Nat, who had made the whole class laugh in the last lesson by fluffing her lines and then re-reading her passage in a Latino accent, like some Mexican actress. The thing was, I couldn’t concentrate on the book. It was the last thing on my mind. I was thinking about that boy, Sukh, who I kept smiling at for no reason at all. If I saw him walking down the corridor I’d break out in a smile like some silly little girl. It was embarrassing. But I couldn’t help myself. It happened every time I saw him. He was so fit.

  I was smiling to myself when Nat walked into the classroom, swung her bag off her shoulder and slammed it down on the table in front of me.

  ‘Nat! Bloody hell, you made me jump,’ I said.

  ‘Relax, babe – I was only putting my bag down. You’d think I had shot you or something.’

  ‘Have you practised reading the text this time?’ I asked, after my heart had stopped trying to jump out of my mouth.

  ‘Oh yeah – ’cos I haven’t got anything better to do with my evenings than sit around reading William,’ she replied.

  I laughed. ‘So that means you haven’t?’

  Nat shrugged. ‘Dev came round so I had other things on my mind. Like his William . . .’ She grinned at me like a cat.

  ‘Natalie! I can’t believe you just said that – get thee to a nunnery!’

  ‘Oh, chill out – I’m kidding,’ replied Nat, smiling.

  I decided to change the subject. ‘I got that Bend It Like Beckham out last night—’ I began.

  ‘Tell you what – that Beckham – man, oh man, would he—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it, Nat. Seriously, I’m getting worried about you and your hormones. Isn’t it boys who are supposed to be like dogs in heat at this age?’

  ‘Equal rights, sister. I can say and do what I like,’ replied Nat, smiling. ‘And anyway, I saw the way you were smiling to yourself when I walked in. Like some demented nun high on ecstasy.’

  ‘I was not!’

  ‘Yeah you were – thinking ’bout that Sukh again?’

  I smiled at her. Well, what else was I supposed to do? ‘Maybe . . .’ I said coyly, for maximum dramatic effect.

  ‘Rani – you little minx, you!’ laughed Nat, looking surprised at me.

  ‘He’s lovely,’ I replied, smiling even wider.

  Nat shook her head, walking around to the other side of the table to sit down. The rest of the class were beginning to file in slowly. She lowered her voice. ‘Why don’t you ask him out?’ she said.

  ‘I can’t – my family ain’t exactly the most liberated people . . .’

  ‘What they don’t know won’t give them a coronary, will it?’ answered Nat in a whisper, an allowance for the fact that the teacher, Miss Crumb, had walked in and was asking for silence.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, turning my attention to the lesson.

  Behind me someone said something about someone else’s feet being smelly.

  ‘Quiet!’ Miss Crumb shushed them and turned to Nat. ‘Natalie – can you read from Act Three, Scene Five, please?’

  ‘Me?’ asked Nat, pointing to herself. ‘Why, gladly I will, miss. In this day and age, with children more interested in computer games and ruining the English language with T-X-T M-S-G-S, it must be a real comfort to know that you have such a dedicated pupil as me. A real crumb of comfort . . .’

  The classroom erupted with laughter as Miss Crumb mock applauded. ‘Yes – very clever, Natalie . . .’

  I just smiled again, and then all I could think about was Sukh Bains . . .

  RANI

  MY NAME MEANS ‘queen’ in Punjabi, the language of my parents. Sometimes it’s a name that I don’t mind and occasionally it’s like a noose around my neck – especially when the other Punjabi kids at school latch onto it. Even my best mate Natalie rips me over it. Calls me Bollywood ki Rani. Bollywood Queen.

  The thing about names is that they all mean something. And sometimes they can get you into trouble . . .

  Sukh finally plucked up the courage to talk to me about a week after we first noticed each other. We’d come up from primary to secondary school at the same time and not spoken in the years since. Which, if you think about it, is quite weird. It took Natalie to make a remark about how sexy Sukh’s bum looked in jeans to get me to notice him. Generally the lads at school are either minging or stupid. Most of them are still babies really. They crowd around porn magazines in gangs and giggle at the naked women, or they fight because one of them looked at the other the ‘wrong way’. Stupid little kids with spots, greasy hair and no concept of hormonal control. Not to mention BO and smelly feet. Nasty.

  The first time I looked at him properly my heart skipped a beat. No – seriously. I know it sounds all stupid and that, but it honestly did. I looked at him and he looked back, right into my eyes, and I started to blush and feel hot all over. Talk about fit. His eyes were this beautiful amber-brown colour, like pools that you could jump into and swim in. Pools of honey. And when he smiled he just looked so beautiful, with those big eyes and really thick, long lashes, just like a girl’s; and his soft, coffee-coloured skin, totally kissable lips and white teeth that sparkled . . .

  Nat pissed herself laughing when I told her all of that. She started singing a song from an India Arie CD, called ‘Brown Skin’, and what made it worse was that Nat has a voice like an angel, so I couldn’t even diss her back over her singing. She’s so talented. Sings, dances, acts. She’s five foot eight, with a body most girls would die for. You know – great tits, perfect bum. Long legs. Long brown hair. Lips like Angelina Jolie. The lucky cow. She should be on the next Pop Idol thing on t
he telly. Then again, maybe she has too much talent for that.

  I walked off in embarrassment that first time I saw Sukh and then I had to wait a whole week before he finally got the message and came over to ask me out. Nat had spent all that time trying to let him know that I liked him via his stupid mate Jaspal. It was hard going. Jaspal wanted to make up a foursome with Natalie, who already has a boyfriend – Dev – and when she made it clear that she found him about as attractive as a rancid dishcloth, Jas refused to talk to Sukh for me. But Nat had other plans up her sleeve. She followed Sukh around all week, popping up everywhere he went, just in case he wanted to ask her about me – the lunch queue, the bus stop. She even went into the boys’ changing rooms at one point.

  ‘You went into the boys’ locker room?’ I asked her, ashamed of the brazen hussy who was my best friend. Ashamed and strangely proud too.

  ‘Yeah – it’s no big deal,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t there anyway, and besides they were all dressed. Talk about anticlimax, babe.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ I replied, smiling. I looked at Nat.

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘back to the real mission. No, I didn’t speak to him. I think he’s scared of me, Rani. Honestly.’

  I gave her a quizzing look. ‘Scared? Of you? Surely not.’

  The sarcasm registered. ‘Very funny,’ replied Nat, putting on a hurt look.

  ‘Oh pack it in, Nat. I’m not your mum.’

  She broke out in a grin. ‘You look old enough to be,’ she said.

  ‘You cheeky little— Look, I’m not interested in petty jibes, girl. What am I gonna do about Sukh?’

  ‘You could try just going up to him and asking him out,’ suggested Nat.

  ‘Me? Ask him? Sod that. I’m a romantic at heart. None of your bra-burning liberation for me, m’dear.’

  ‘Equality, sister,’ laughed Nat. ‘You’re either with us or against us.’

  I sighed. ‘Oh, the stupid little boy. What am I gonna do?’

  Eventually Natalie just walked right up to Sukh while he was standing in the dinner queue, grabbed him by the arm and told him that if he came quietly she wouldn’t be forced to bite him where it hurts, right there in front of everyone. Funnily enough he followed her. I was in the library, entertaining the other side of my split personality, the snotty swot kid from the land of Geek who always did her homework on time, when in stormed Natalie with Sukh in tow.