The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

  A huge extended family was checking in at the reception desk when Shirina came down the stairs. “Excuse me,” she said, elbowing past their overflowing suitcases and two grandparents in wheelchairs. “I’m very sorry, but I need to talk to you,” she said to the desk manager.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “My passport,” she said. “There was a card with very important information on it. Did it slip out, by any chance? Maybe you threw it away?”

  “I don’t remember it, madam,” he said, returning to his typing.

  “It just had a name and a number on it but it’s very important,” Shirina repeated. The man probably caught the hint of urgency in her voice. He stopped what he was doing.

  “I really can’t recall seeing a card in your passport case,” he said. “If it fell on the floor, it was swept up long before you got your passport back.” He pointed at the framed certificate on the wall congratulating them for steadfast cleaning service. “We don’t like litter on our floors.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Shirina mumbled, returning to the room. It wasn’t a huge problem, she told herself. She could call Sehaj and ask him for the info again, and he’d tell her and it would be fine. It was late afternoon in Australia now. Although the pain from her fall was gone, she didn’t want to take any chances.

  Back in the room, she paced the tiny length of floor between the bed and the bathroom door and took in a few deep breaths. As she picked up her phone from the dresser, she noticed that her ring finger was still bulging around her wedding band and engagement ring. The heat made her feet swell as well; she could feel the beginnings of a blister forming on the side of her big toe where it rubbed against the strap of her sandals. She pressed Sehaj’s name in her contacts list and wriggled the ring off. The call connected just as she placed it on the dresser.

  “Hello? Sehaj?” she asked.

  “Who is this?” replied a croaky woman’s voice.

  Mother. What was she doing answering Sehaj’s phone?

  “Hello, Mother,” Shirina said. Her manner was always formal with her mother-in-law, even at this distance. She sat up a little bit straighter. Her heart began to patter in her chest. What was going on?

  “Hello, beti,” Mother replied. There was little affection in the way she greeted Shirina, even using a term of endearment. “Everything is going smoothly?”

  “Yes,” Shirina said. “I just need to talk to Sehaj.”

  “He’s not around. He went for a run.”

  Sehaj usually left his phone in their bedside table when he went running along the creek near their home. One of Shirina’s earlier memories of their marriage—the honeymoon period—was standing on the newly built deck and watching him pass, his limbs cutting through the air like machinery. Now she shuddered to think of what else she had left in that dresser drawer that her mother-in-law felt so free to rummage through: a half-empty tube of lubricant, an illustrated pocket copy of the Kama Sutra that a coworker of his had given as a cheeky engagement present.

  “Can you ask him to call me back when he returns?” Shirina asked.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Mother replied.

  Her response felt like a punch in Shirina’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “You heard me, beti,” Mother said. If it was possible, the word felt even colder this time, devoid of affection. “It’s not such a good idea.”

  “Why not?” Shirina demanded. “He’s my husband.”

  There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone that sounded just as familiar as when Shirina was standing head-to-head with Mother in their home in Melbourne. It was strange what the long-distance lines picked up. Shirina knew what Mother was going to say next; it was as if she read from a script, yet Shirina fell for it every time. “You don’t have to get so emotional.”

  “Emotional” was like a first warning. “Rude” was the second warning. No matter how politely Shirina said something, no matter how many pleases and thank-yous and with-all-due-respects she used, as long as she said no, she was being rude. The final strike wasn’t clear. Shirina hadn’t gone that far yet.

  “You called him yesterday, didn’t you?” Mother continued.

  “Yes,” Shirina said, already knowing where this was going. “I thought he should know that we were in Punjab already.”

  “But was it necessary to make such a fuss? To create such hysterics? He was beside himself after that phone call.”

  “What do you mean?” Shirina asked.

  “I found him in tears in his bedroom, babbling about how sorry he felt for you.”

  Sehaj was upset on her behalf? He hadn’t sounded that way over the phone, but maybe he was putting up a tough façade. This information buoyed Shirina. She could still go through with what the family wanted her to do, but she just needed to know that Sehaj understood how hard it was to hide and lie and pretend that it wasn’t happening.

  “I didn’t mean to upset him,” Shirina said. “I was having some doubts and I was scared. Surely you’d understand that, Mother.” Remember when we used to understand each other? Shirina wanted to ask. In the first few weeks, when she was still adjusting to her new life, she and Mother would walk to the shops together and they’d both pull shawls around their shoulders, shocked by the sudden biting Melbourne wind when it had been sunny only moments before. “It’s so nice having a girl around the house,” Mother said so approvingly whenever she saw Shirina wiping down the kitchen counters or rearranging the shoes in the doorway that Sehaj carelessly kicked off.

  Then Shirina found a job and she had less time for housework during the week, so it piled up for Saturdays and Sundays. Mother’s comments changed focus to what needed doing—the dust-coated windowsills, the loads of washed and dried laundry waiting to be folded and put away. “I didn’t think having a daughter would be as messy as having a son,” Mother would say with a laugh that told Shirina she didn’t actually find it funny at all.

  Mother let out a laugh now as well. “My goodness, so much drama,” she said. Shirina could picture her shaking her head. “Since you came into our lives, it’s been up and down, a roller coaster. Sehaj kept going on about how it wasn’t your fault. Nobody said it was your fault. Did I? Did I say that?” She chuckled again, how ridiculous!

  “No,” Shirina said through gritted teeth.

  “That’s right,” Mother said triumphantly. “In fact, I was very hurt by what Sehaj told me after that. You made a comment about how I was able to make it up the stairs.”

  “I was simply wondering where you got the strength from all of a sudden,” Shirina said. “A week ago, you needed a wheelchair and you needed my assistance to go anywhere.”

  “Well, with the help of God’s blessings, my hip is healing very well, dear. It must be all that service you’ve been putting into the temples in India. It is very kind of you. You’re doing a good thing there, Shirina, and I’m very grateful.”

  This was said with no malice and Shirina felt herself softening. Beneath her tough exterior, Mother loved her. Sehaj had told her this many times: “She loves you, Shirina. Sure, she can be a bit overbearing but it’s how she shows her love.” You couldn’t have closeness with family members without aggravating each other once in a while. She had to remind herself that Mum’s distant parenting had left her feeling like an afterthought. Even when Mum read out that letter, Shirina could sense that it was addressed to her older sisters, because her response didn’t matter.

  In her new family, though, it was different. There was a chance to have a close relationship with Mother, if she just did this one thing. Shirina realized that up until this moment, she had been undecided. There was clarity and immediate relief in having her feet firmly planted on one side, rather than tiptoeing around the border, afraid to commit.

  “Can you please ask Sehaj to call me? I just need the number of the place—I lost the information for the driver and the address and everything.”

  “Oh,” Mother said. “Then why did
n’t you say so? I have all of that information written down. Just give me a minute, beti.”

  There it was, that word again, this time infused with tenderness. Shirina felt the tension in her chest melting away as she sank back into the clean, cool sheets tautly stretched across her bed. She’d allow herself some time to lie down here and then she’d wash all of that water out from her hair. The sarovar did not do much to cleanse her, and the fall felt like a terrible omen. She had to start all over again.

  The main square in the center of the holy city was brimming with tourists now that it was afternoon. A group of men and women in backpacks huddled around a statue commemorating the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Rajni only had a rudimentary knowledge of the massacre; it wasn’t covered in her school textbooks and it happened so long ago that it wasn’t relevant to her. But the statue was captivating and could represent any horrific incident: the faces of men and women rising from a viscous smoke, their faces forlorn and some mouths twisted in anguish. She was a little girl when another massacre took place in the Golden Temple, and she remembered Mum watching the news nonstop, her hand hovering over her heart. Rajni was too young to know the details at the time but years later, the story became woven into her own history: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had ordered her soldiers to storm the Golden Temple to remove a militant leader. There were more raids on the Punjabi countryside to round up suspects, and there were protests and violent fights between Sikhs and Hindus in the cities.

  She glanced at Jezmeen and Shirina, who were looking at the statue with a different sense of curiosity—more removed, more as spectators of the events than Rajni. So much had happened before Jezmeen and Shirina were even born. Rajni remembered watching the news with Dad and seeing him nervously patting his beard, his eyes full of worry for the first time. Sikhs were being hunted down in India, their beards and long tresses cut to humiliate them. “It could start happening here,” Dad had warned Mum, looking out the window as if the thugs had spilled out from a holding cell somewhere and were clamoring at their door. “Keep a low profile around your Hindu friends,” he’d told Rajni. But at school, brown was brown, and everybody was too busy worrying about being bullied for being Indian to start turning on each other.

  A small group of tourists began to wedge their way into the crowd to take pictures near the statue. Shirina stepped closer to Rajni. Rajni caught a whiff of the hotel’s floral-scented body wash and noticed that Shirina’s hair was nicely fluffed. Had she left the Golden Temple to return to the hotel for a shower? Something about this irked Rajni. They had waited for over an hour for her to come back, during which time the lunch service was almost finished and all that was left to eat were the charred pieces of roti from the bottom of the stack, and some dal which had gone cold.

  Just thinking about it made Rajni’s stomach rumble. She placed a palm on her belly, embarrassed at the noise, but Jezmeen clearly heard it.

  “I could go for a snack too,” Jezmeen said. “Was it just me, or was the temple food a little light?”

  “It was,” Rajni agreed. The problem was, she was a little bit sick of Indian food. She should have eaten more variety in Delhi, where there was Chinese and Western.

  “There are a couple of dhabas over there,” Shirina said, pointing at a strip of restaurants that led back out to the main road. “I saw a TripAdvisor sticker on one of them.”

  “It’s going to be more of the same, though, isn’t it?” Jezmeen said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting tired of Indian food.”

  “Me too,” Shirina admitted.

  “Well, if that’s how you two feel,” Rajni said with a shrug. She didn’t want to seem too obvious but she could kill for a burger. Ever since they arrived, she’d been eyeing the two-story McDonald’s and the new McFlurry advertisement that took up an entire window.

  Jezmeen and Shirina led the way. Rajni tossed a glance over her shoulder at the statue. Some people had their eyes shut and they were praying to it. A middle-aged woman wearing jeans and a loose cotton top dipped her head, kissed the tips of her fingers, and touched the foot of the statue. Rajni wondered if she should do the same—it seemed wrong to turn her back on this tribute to pursue an ice-cream sundae—but her sisters were marching ahead, already having forgotten about the dead and suffering. Another pang of hunger struck Rajni. She noticed the soft bounce of Shirina’s hair and felt another tickle of irritation.

  Right outside the restaurant’s entrance, men were circulating and holding boards with photographs of nearby tourist destinations. “Himalayas,” a man called. “Very pretty drive.” He waved his board featuring snow-capped mountains against wide blue skies. “Wagah Border,” another man called. “Wagah Border Wagah Border Wagah Border,” he continued frenetically as he saw the three sisters approaching.

  “No,” Rajni said right away, but Jezmeen took a brochure from him before they entered the restaurant.

  “I’ve heard it’s quite a show,” Jezmeen said, flipping through the brochure as they stepped into line at the counter.

  “The India–Pakistan border?” Shirina asked. “There’s a show there?”

  “The changing of the guards. That’s what these guys are advertising. You go there at the specific time that the guards switch duties. It’s a bit of a spectacle. I’ve seen it on YouTube.”

  Rajni had seen it in real life, during her last trip to India with Mum. Some relatives had suggested the day trip and they had all gone together in a noisy, crowded car. Rajni remembered the dusty road on the drive there and the stern military guards at each checkpoint. She remembered how frighteningly passionate everybody on the India side of the border became during the preshow. “Why aren’t you cheering?” an uncle had asked her. She’d been shocked to silence by the booming music and the feverish wave that swept over the crowd, bringing her to her feet and dropping her back down again. The uncle nodded and smiled knowingly. “Ah, you’re an English girl, that’s why.” It wasn’t said kindly. By then, Rajni was already aware that her relatives viewed her as a foreigner, and it was with a mix of amusement and distaste that they pointed it out to Mum, who responded with stern words to Rajni. “Didn’t I bring you here to learn about your culture?” she asked loudly for everybody’s benefit, while Rajni seethed with rage.

  Shirina didn’t look too keen to go either. “How far away is it?”

  “About an hour’s drive,” Jezmeen said.

  Shirina shook her head. “I really don’t want to do any more traveling than we have to,” she said.

  Jezmeen turned to Rajni. “Raj? Come on.”

  Rajni looked at Shirina, already ordering her ice cream. She didn’t want to do any more traveling? It was Rajni and Jezmeen who were going to be completing the most difficult part of the pilgrimage. Shirina just had to visit relatives—her husband’s rich relatives. They were sending a chauffeured car for her. Who was she to complain about traveling?

  “You know what, maybe I will go,” Rajni said. “It’s a very comfortable drive and it’s something we can do together.”

  “Oh good!” Jezmeen said. “I’ll go book in with the guy now.”

  Four McFlurries arrived on a tray. “We only ordered three,” Rajni informed the woman at the counter, who presented the receipt to her. Four McFlurries.

  “Two for me,” Shirina said.

  This irked Rajni as well, although she couldn’t quite explain why. It was greedy to have more than one ice cream but Shirina didn’t seem to notice. She let Rajni take the tray and they made their way up the stairs, finding a quiet table by the window. Below them, the street was busy with touts and tourists. Rajni watched Jezmeen negotiating the trip with a man wearing a sandwich board. His arms waved about enthusiastically. When Rajni turned back to face Shirina, she was taking a huge mouthful of ice cream. Rajni noticed that her wedding ring was gone.

  “Did you take your ring off?” Rajni asked, nodding at Shirina’s hand.

  “Yeah,” Shirina said. “In the interest of being humble and everythin
g.”

  Was she being smug? It came across that way to Rajni now. That ostentatious diamond ring had always bothered her but the absence of it, and Shirina’s reason for taking it off—I don’t want to flaunt what I have in front of all the poor people—bothered her even more.

  “This hits the spot,” Shirina said, scooping her spoon into the ice cream.

  Rajni said nothing, edging her spoon into her ice cream to take a tiny portion, just out of spite. “I’ve never seen you indulge so much in sweets before,” she said.

  She expected Shirina to look a bit self-conscious about her two ice creams, apologetic even. Instead, she nodded and took another scoop. “When on holiday, I suppose.”

  The words burst from Rajni’s lips: “You are not on holiday.”

  Shirina’s spoon hung between the cup and her open mouth. She looked like she was posing for a commercial, except the expression on her face was puzzled. “I know, Rajni.”

  “I don’t think you do know,” Rajni said. “We came here with a purpose. It’s not some holiday where we meander from one thing to another.”

  “And eating in McDonald’s was part of Mum’s spiritual plan, was it?” Shirina shot back. Rajni was taken aback by Shirina’s retort. It was like arguing with Jezmeen all of a sudden.

  “You’re not taking this trip seriously,” Rajni said. “Right from the start, you’ve made it clear that you’ll be dodging the difficult stuff.”

  “I told you, this was all arranged at the last minute. I’ve got obligations. You know how hard it is to say no to the in-laws.”

  Rajni ignored Shirina’s appeal to her experience with Indian in-laws. Kabir’s mother had sewn her the most hideous cushion covers—turquoise beading on sunny yellow fabric—and expected her to have them on display every time she visited. Rajni remembered stuffing her cushions into those covers with such rage that one of the beads popped off and hit her in the eye, momentarily blinding her. “It’s literally an eyesore,” she complained to Kabir, who shrugged and said, “Is it really such a big deal, Rajni? What’s wrong with just giving in once in a while?”