The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  Rajni nodded. “I know that feeling.” She remembered seeing the bruise on Jezmeen’s cheek at Mum’s funeral and thinking with outrage: Who did that to my little sister? Before remembering that it was her.

  A fresh worry struck Rajni now. “So if this isn’t an all-women’s station . . . ?”

  “There aren’t men in the cells,” Hari said.

  “But the officers?” Do you know what could have happened to you? Mum had shouted at Rajni. How naive she was, to think that she could walk into a police station in the middle of the night, a teenage girl with teased hair and heavy makeup, and assume she would be safe. Her other option was to keep walking on the street, though, and that was far more dangerous. What hurt most was Mum’s fury. Rajni was trembling when she finally came home, and Mum had no words of comfort for her, only anger. That was the only reason Rajni had shouted back. It happened in a blink, and everything changed.

  “You can think about all the possibilities,” Hari said gently. “But they’ll just drive you mad with worry. As of now, we know she’s getting out in a few hours and we can only hope they won’t change their minds. Let’s just focus on that.” Rajni stared at him, unable to stop worrying. “Breathe,” he said. “I’m stepping out for a cigarette break, and then I’ll try to talk to the officers again.”

  Rajni swallowed and nodded. She shut her eyes and tried to picture a soothing landscape. She had taken an anxiety seminar once, and found the mindfulness and meditation chants only useful for as long as it took her to start making lists of how many minutes she was going to be mindful every day, because it wasn’t that difficult, and it could change her brain chemistry. Then she piled on a new exercise routine and general tips on being a better person, and soon she was overwhelmed by all her self-improvement plans and not being mindful at all, which led to more anxiety.

  She opened her eyes and noticed that Shirina’s eyes were closed. She was taking in deep breaths, but they didn’t seem meditative. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Shirina kept her eyes shut and nodded. “Just my stomach again,” she said. There was a sheen of sweat on her face and her cheeks were flushed. Rajni looked up at the slow wall-mounted fan as it turned its head toward them. “You might need some air,” she said. She felt bad for taking Shirina along with her now, but she had been afraid to go to the police station alone.

  “I’ll be fine,” Shirina said. She opened her eyes. The smile she gave Rajni was strained. Once again, Rajni found herself questioning what was going on with Shirina. Food poisoning and jet lag aside, she seemed troubled since she arrived in India. I don’t have to worry about you too, do I? Rajni wondered. She didn’t have the capacity to take on another sister’s problems, not right now anyway. She told herself she’d get to it later.

  Rajni looked around. Without Hari, she felt even more vulnerable. The station was full of men—visitors, officers. The few women among them were on the sidelines like Rajni and Shirina. The officer at the front desk had only listened when Hari spoke.

  “Should I cancel our train tickets for tomorrow? The hotel booking in Amritsar?” Rajni asked. “Should we just call off the whole thing and go back to England once Jezmeen’s released? Why are we here? What the hell are we doing?”

  She realized she sounded a bit hysterical. The police officer behind the desk shot her a look, and then began rummaging through his files. Shirina looked nervous. Breathe . . .

  Rajni closed her eyes and immediately saw Mum. It was impossible not to think of her now, in this place. Mum was sitting on her hospital bed, her face screwed in concentration as another wave of pain coursed through her body. Rajni tried to shake away the image—she was supposed to focus on calming thoughts—but Mum stubbornly remained. Her face looked younger and she had fewer white hairs. Rajni tried to cast her mind’s eye to the window—maybe there was a view of some soothing greenery—but Mum moved with her. Even when Rajni pictured an empty white room, there was the younger version of Mum. She was packing their suitcases for a trip to India, to bring some sense into her eldest daughter. No nightclubs, no cigarettes, no bad influences. Just three weeks of learning about her culture and spending time with family. Mum was determined that Rajni would return to London a good girl.

  “Raj,” Shirina said, nudging her in the ribs.

  Her eyes flew open. As if Rajni had conjured Jezmeen, there she was, framed by the doorway behind the officer’s desk. The officer who had looked up at Rajni was standing next to Jezmeen. She didn’t see them waving at her. She was led to the front desk and given some forms to sign. Rajni watched as Jezmeen gave them a quick glance before scrawling her signature. Her gaze roamed the room until it rested on Rajni, on her feet. Just before Jezmeen walked out to greet them, Rajni felt the numbness returning to her knuckles and she fought to press her arms to her sides. She could easily punch her sister again. What the hell were you thinking? Mum had shouted at Rajni all those years ago, and Rajni, still terrified, had said something she would never be able to take back.

  Chapter Eight

  Day Four: Delhi to Amritsar

  This journey will take you from India’s capital city to Punjab, our ancestral state. Look out the windows and take in the landscape. Listen to the conversations around you. Watch people rejoicing as they rush to meet their relatives on the platforms of those smaller stops along the way. There’s no greater show of love and faith than traveling a long distance for somebody.

  The journey from Delhi to Amritsar was supposed to start and end with food. This was how Mum had always described the train rides to Punjab, and although Jezmeen had never taken the trip herself, her memory had absorbed Mum’s stories so they became her own foggy recollections. She had images of an endless supply of pakoras and samosas, the paper cups of steaming-hot tea, and the flat squares of Indian sweets.

  They were pulling out of the station now. She looked out the window as the train picked up pace. Beyond the tracks, the sun burned fiercely, its image wavering behind the train’s fumes. Mothers ushered their children ahead of them on a slow walk along the tracks. Mountains of garbage glittered behind clusters of boxy houses that appeared like Lego structures, extensions jammed together, jutting out. The train’s pace picked up as the landscape widened before them. Once they had moved beyond the outskirts of Delhi, the greenery became more consistent, the houses farther apart. Jezmeen stared at one, painted bright orange and with a satellite dish sitting on the rooftop like a trophy, and she had a longing to be inert, lazing the day away instead of hurtling toward their history.

  What a relief it was to be leaving Delhi. Just the movement of the train made Jezmeen grateful that she was out of that jail cell, even though her time spent there had been mercifully short. Last night, she had hardly slept. She kept replaying the moment of her arrest over in her mind, still shocked at what had transpired. In the early hours of the morning, she went into the bathroom with the intention of taking a shower but the sight of the small space made her remember the cell crammed with bodies, and she returned to bed.

  Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten breakfast—they had had to check out of the hotel too early to make their way to the train station, and although she had been tempted to stop at a roadside stall to get some fresh pani puris, a death glare from Rajni had silenced her. Jezmeen sneaked a look at her now. She was staring straight ahead and hadn’t said anything to Jezmeen since her release. Not a word. Don’t you want to know if I’m okay? Jezmeen was tempted to ask. She had felt very sorry for herself sitting in that jail cell, though she counted herself among the fortunate ones who hadn’t been hauled off for questioning. The police eventually realized that the cell was overcrowded even with those women taken away, and they began releasing the ones who hadn’t been directly involved in the organizing. Jezmeen was certain she would be there for ages but they let her go early. Her passport might have had something to do with it; also the fact that some of the women in the cell still thought she was Polly Mishra and kept referring to her as such, to the intri
gue of passing officers. The women who learned Jezmeen’s real identity simply ignored her, their thoughts probably too occupied with their current crisis.

  Rajni’s terse silence had followed them back to the hotel, where Jezmeen attempted to explain herself. “I didn’t—” She got that much out before Rajni raised her hand like a wall. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Let’s just get the rest of this trip over with and then we can go back to our lives.” Her anger vibrated through her like an electric current and her fists were clenched at her sides.

  The stretches of lush green land were becoming longer. Untamed stalks of grass rustled in the morning breeze, and on the dusty horizon, Jezmeen could see the sun hovering over a small hill of trees. The windows rattled as another train passed in the opposite direction. Cattle-class passengers clung to the railings in the open entrances. Jezmeen wondered what became of the other girls who had been arrested with her. Who could she ask? What could she do about it anyway? Her empty stomach made a mournful moan.

  “Do you know if she booked our tickets with a meal service?” Jezmeen whispered to Shirina, careful that Rajni didn’t hear.

  “I expect so,” Shirina said. “It’s an eight-hour journey.”

  In the seat in front of Shirina, a toddler was standing and peering at them through sweeping black lashes. “What a cutie,” Jezmeen said with a smile. The toddler grinned back. Jezmeen waved with both her hands. The toddler clapped and disappeared behind her seat only to pop up again, this time trying to get Shirina’s attention.

  “Hello, darling,” Rajni said from her seat near the window, but the toddler paid her no mind. “Didi,” she said to Shirina, addressing her as “sister.” Stretching out her arms, to touch Shirina. She appeared to be attracted to the bright pink tunic which brought out a glow in Shirina’s cheeks. “She likes you,” Jezmeen remarked.

  Shirina looked up from her book only briefly before returning to it. Not a terrible strategy, Jezmeen decided. As cute as the little girl was, there was a limit to how much amusement she could reasonably provide for eight hours. She pulled a few funny faces and then ignored the little girl, who found another passenger to amuse her soon enough.

  The smell of deep-fried onion bhajis drifted down the aisle and made Jezmeen’s mouth water. She craned her neck, expecting to see a food cart being pushed down the aisle, but the smell was coming from the seats ahead of them. Several generations of one family were traveling in the same carriage as them, and they had begun unpacking their snacks. A flask of tea was passed around. Somebody split open a samosa and the steam unfurled in the air, carrying the smell of spiced potatoes to Jezmeen’s nostrils.

  She had a strong memory then, of being young and sitting on a kitchen stool while Mum bustled about. Mustard seeds popped and crackled in sizzling oil in the frying pan and the stove-top kettle whistled. Mum’s expression was far from the serene look of Indian housewives in the drama series—her eyes were pained and her skin taut with worry. Jezmeen had just asked her to take her and Shirina shopping. We need new socks, she’d said, snapping the loose elastic on her socks to prove her point. Your socks are fine, Mum had said, refusing to look at them. Jezmeen took a closer look at the family occupying all those rows ahead of them. The men were loud and their presence most obvious, standing in the aisles and hollering out to each other. The women talked while juggling their children, their conversation often interrupted by the laughs and calls of their husbands and brothers.

  The meal service, when it finally arrived, was a disappointing contrast to the abundant home-cooked fare of the extended family—two soggy potato fritters and a Tetra-pack of lassi—but Jezmeen devoured it. Yesterday, fear had canceled her appetite. She believed that she might languish in an Indian jail cell forever.

  Shirina hadn’t touched her meal. She looked a bit repulsed by it. The toddler was slowly rising again, this time with a floppy-eared stuffed bunny as an offering.

  “Are you going to eat yours?” Jezmeen asked. Shirina shook her head and pushed the tray to Jezmeen. She tore through the meal gratefully.

  One of the men in the family was telling a joke. Jezmeen didn’t catch the whole thing, but the punch line only elicited a few weak laughs. “Oh, come on,” he thundered. “Don’t you all get it?”

  “We get it. It’s just a lame joke,” a woman replied. There was more laughter at this, and a few claps.

  The man grinned. “Darling, when we were engaged, you always laughed at my jokes.”

  A few members of the family began to hoot. “Calm down, we’re in a public place,” shouted another man, who didn’t seem to think that shouting in public was inappropriate.

  “It’s a different thing, nah, being engaged and being married?” countered another woman. “After marriage, you hear the same jokes, over and over again. They stop being funny.”

  “It’s a good thing we’re headed to the village, then,” called the first man. “I can always exchange you for another wife.”

  The women’s scoffing and eye-rolling responses showed their disapproval but they said nothing and returned to their circle for conversation.

  “Didi?” the little girl pleaded. She waved her bunny. Shirina folded the page of her book into a corner and shut it. With one hand, she tugged the bunny’s ears. The toddler giggled and yanked back her toy.

  Jezmeen looked over at Rajni, who was staring out the window. Open fields and paddies came into view. The train crossed over a lake that ran like a bright vein through the yellow-green grassland. Jezmeen wished she had had the chance to come to India during her childhood. Imagine summers spent journeying with extended family members, sharing histories over pakoras while the train brought them to their origins. The carriage shuddered against the steel surface of the bridge and the family’s laughter exploded, amplifying the sisters’ own silence. The little girl giggled as her mother pulled her back into her seat. “You’ll fall, darling,” she said. “Don’t bother other people.” Through the gap between the seats, she flashed an apologetic smile at Shirina.

  Jezmeen couldn’t take the quiet anymore. This was not how they did things. Rajni’s eyes were shut and she was taking deep, long breaths. As she let out a breath, she looked like a deflating balloon. Jezmeen reached out and jabbed her hard in the arm.

  “OUCH. What the hell, Jezmeen?”

  “I have a few things to say to you.”

  Shirina, sandwiched between them, pressed her back against her chair.

  “I’m busy at the moment,” Rajni said.

  “Doing what? You’re sitting on a train, literally doing nothing. I can see you.”

  “I’m practicing mindful breathing,” Rajni said. “Or I was, until you rudely interrupted me. Now I have to start again.”

  “If you can’t multitask breathing with conversation, you’re doing something wrong,” Jezmeen informed Rajni.

  “I’m not getting into another argument with you about mindfulness, the benefits of which are evidenced in multiple studies—OUCH. STOP PINCHING ME.”

  “Shirina, exchange seats with me,” Jezmeen ordered. “Rajni and I have some things to sort out.”

  “No, stay where you are,” Rajni said, pinning Shirina’s wrist to the armrest as if she might fly off otherwise. “Jezmeen, if you want to talk, I’m sorry, I’m just not ready yet.” She shut her eyes and went back to breathing in and out. Jezmeen could tell from the way her face was squeezed that her mind was certainly not clear of angry thoughts. She waited until Rajni let out a long exhalation.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” Jezmeen said.

  Rajni rolled her eyes. “Sure, it wasn’t.”

  “The protest just happened. I was walking around Karol Bagh and I got on the Metro to join you two at India Gate—”

  “You were supposed to be at India Gate with us from the beginning.”

  “Sure, but that’s a different argument altogether,” Jezmeen said. And not one she was keen on having. Nobody needed to tell her that she overdid the drinking occasionally—she wa
s aware of it and wasn’t that the first step? She was planning on taking more control over her impulses. Eventually, when she had the time, space, and wherewithal. A trip across India involved too many variables without adding a sobriety challenge to the mix.

  “If we came here to find ourselves—” Jezmeen began, not quite knowing where her argument would end up. She wanted Rajni to know that being arrested had frightened her. Although she was acting nonchalant about the whole thing now, she hadn’t been able to sleep last night, and the thought of that cell still made her stomach turn. But that didn’t mean she had been wrong to go to the women’s march in the first place.

  “We came here to remember Mum and to do service,” Rajni said.

  “Isn’t protesting a service? Fighting for women’s rights? Did you know that there are women in the villages whose husbands share them with their brothers because female infanticide has resulted in an alarmingly low ratio of women to men?”

  This got Shirina’s attention. She looked up at Jezmeen, alarmed. “It’s true,” Jezmeen continued. “It’s something like six men to one woman in some of the poorer states here. It’s disgraceful.”

  Annoyance twitched across Rajni’s features. “Trouble just seems to find you, doesn’t it? Since the day we started this trip, you’ve been sabotaging it.”

  “I have not.”

  “You have. You’ve been contrary from the beginning. Even Shirina agrees with me.”

  Jezmeen stared at Shirina. “Is this true?” she demanded. Shirina squirmed in her seat. “Is it?” Jezmeen asked.

  “I think you could have avoided drinking that much if you knew it was going to make it difficult for you to wake up the next day, that’s all. I made a passing remark to Rajni on our way to the temple. I didn’t say ‘contrary,’ ” Shirina said defensively.

  “Well, nobody says ‘contrary’ unless they’re over seventy,” Jezmeen said. To Rajni’s credit, she let the comment slide. “But I don’t understand why you think I’m sabotaging the trip. Shirina’s the one who’s not even coming along to the last half of it. Somehow that’s acceptable? While we’re making an arduous trek up a mountain and sleeping on straw mats, she’s going to be eating sweets and receiving newlywed gifts from her in-laws’ extended family in the village. She’ll probably even have Wi-Fi access. That’s not very fair, Shirina.”