“So amazing,” Shirina said. Her mind was still on the director she had read about. Shirina recalled seeing a story that somebody had re-posted from a Bollywood celebrity news site about the scandal. The post on the message board attracted many views and comments—the reply rated most popular was: “A) do you believe everything reported on this trashy site? B) it’s not exactly unheard of in the industry. C) did she get the role in the end? I’ve never heard of her. Could be sour grapes. D) what constitutes ‘feeling up’ anyway?”
The last question started a heated debate about what was considered inappropriate touching, and the moderators eventually turned off comments, putting up a strict notice about community standards and the purpose of the message board. Shirina hadn’t commented, but she was most curious about the posts that claimed that the world was becoming too sensitive these days. “Everything’s abuse or assault these days,” one person had written. “Where does it stop?”
Hearing the exasperation in that woman’s tone, Shirina felt strangely relieved. Only the day before, her mother-in-law had given her a hard jab in the rib for letting a pot of pasta boil over. While wiping the starchy liquid off the stove, Shirina’s eyes had filled with tears, more from shock than anything else. By bedtime, she managed to convince herself that Mother meant no offense—it was an attempt to alert Shirina, not hurt her. She was lucky that Mother’s reaction had been so swift.
Jezmeen had let herself into the bathroom and was examining her pores in the magnified round mirror. She raked her fingers through her wet hair. “Hey, can I borrow your hair dryer?” Moments later, the dryer was roaring.
“How was the border?” Shirina asked when Jezmeen was done.
“It was fun,” Jezmeen said, helping herself to a generous dose of Shirina’s leave-in conditioner. “They put on quite a performance out there—beating their chests and kicking their legs. I did some dancing for the motherland.”
“That’s very patriotic of you,” Shirina said.
“Well, might as well get into the spirit of things,” Jezmeen said. “It would have been fun if you’d been there too.”
Shirina nodded. “I just didn’t feel like being in another huge crowd, that’s all.”
“I know,” Jezmeen said.
“Is Rajni still upset?”
“She’ll get over it.”
“I’m taking this trip as seriously as she is,” Shirina said. “I hope she realizes that.”
“She knows. She just gets on her high horse sometimes—I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” Shirina said. She wasn’t worried exactly, but she did not want to leave for Chandigarh tomorrow on bad terms with her sister. Who knew when they would see each other again? She didn’t have any visits planned to London for the near future, and having her sisters visit her in Melbourne was out of the question. They’d know in an instant that she had left her job and that her marital home was her world. They would judge her for it.
Somebody knocked on the door. “Room service,” the bellboy’s voice called. Shirina opened the door and let him in. He brought the tray to the small coffee table in the corner of the room and lifted off each lid with a theatrical flourish—fluffy basmati rice, a bowl of vegetable korma, a small serving of raita, and two gulab jamuns, courtesy of the hotel.
“I hope the dessert makes you feel better, madam,” he said, nodding at the gulab jamun bowl. “The manager informed me you were unwell. Were you able to get through to the hospital?”
“No,” Shirina said quickly. “I mean—yes. No. I didn’t need to go after all. I’m fine.” She was aware that Jezmeen had gone quiet in the bathroom and could hear the conversation. “Okay then, thank you,” Shirina said, ushering the bellboy out the door. She grabbed some notes from her purse and pushed them into his hand—far too much for a tip but she didn’t want him to say another word.
Jezmeen stood in the bathroom doorway, surveying the platter of food. “Want some?” Shirina asked. “There’s plenty.” She was aware that it was a bit early for dinner but if they all went out tonight, she’d probably be hungry enough to eat again.
“No, thank you.”
Shirina avoided Jezmeen’s gaze and sat down on the armchair. As she scooped the rice into the bowl and topped it with a generous serving of korma, she wondered how she’d explain the hospital to Jezmeen.
“I overreacted,” Shirina said, trying her best to look embarrassed. “You know how I fell in the baths today? It hurt so much, I thought I had broken my tailbone.”
“Oh,” Jezmeen said.
“I get nervous about falls,” Shirina continued. “Especially the older we get. When we were little, it was like our bones were made out of rubber. But now I think about Dad and how he slipped in the shower and then walked around for days without knowing that it had begun to kill him.”
This, Jezmeen would understand. After Mum’s funeral, she had confided to Shirina that she had been losing sleep obsessing about the hidden dangers that could kill her before her time was up.
Jezmeen nodded but she still looked concerned. She looked around the room as if searching for the next thing to say. Shirina might have just imagined it, but she thought she saw Jezmeen’s gaze flick at her stomach, which protruded slightly beneath the T-shirt. She drew her shoulders back and tucked in her tummy. Warmth rushed into her cheeks.
“I’ve had a hard couple of months,” Shirina said. She decided she had to say something, or Jezmeen wouldn’t leave her alone. Anyway, what would Jezmeen be able to guess from a small admission that Shirina was having trouble settling into her marital home? Maybe it was good to be a little honest, so her sisters thought that all her problems were just a matter of adjustment. Sometimes Shirina could still fool herself into thinking this way too.
“Work has been stressful and I have a lot waiting for me when I get back.” If only Jezmeen knew how Shirina was counting the days till she was on the plane again to Melbourne. By then, everything would be done and she could go back to her life as planned.
“And things at home?” Jezmeen persisted. “Things with Sehaj, your mother-in-law—all good?”
“Yeah,” Shirina said. “Of course.” She said it too quickly, though. Jezmeen looked at her with curiosity. “I mean, there’s always an adjustment period, right? We’ve been married a few years,” she said lightly. She thought about the American sitcoms—the mother crinkling her nose at her daughter-in-law’s casserole dish and offering a sugary Thank you, dear, as the audience giggled. It’s funny, Shirina told herself when Mother tipped her roast chicken into the rubbish bin because there were a few burned patches and Shirina had suggested just scraping them off. The memory stung. Sehaj hadn’t thrown his meal away but he had only eaten half of it, his loyalty divided.
“It’s hard sometimes, you know?” Shirina said. She decided she could afford to say this much. It had been a long time since she spoke to Lauren about what it was like living with Sehaj and Mother in that huge, quiet house. “My mother-in-law isn’t always the easiest person to get along with.” Even this admission made Shirina feel guilty. You should be grateful.
“She seemed quite reserved,” Jezmeen offered. “I only met her once at the wedding, though.”
Shirina nodded. “She means well, but she’s got some old-fashioned ways about her. And it’s really not her fault.” This was where Lauren would raise an eyebrow and say something about everybody taking responsibility for their own actions. She was half expecting this reaction from Jezmeen as well, but to her surprise, Jezmeen just listened. Shirina pushed away the guilt, the voice telling her that she was disrespecting her in-laws.
“It’s little things, like she expects me to get the cooking just right and the laundry has to be pressed a certain way.” And she hurts me. This, Shirina would never say, because it was going too far. It was all right to complain about the little things. On the message boards, there were threads dedicated to abuse, but Shirina never let herself go there. It was indulgent, calling her problems abuse. She
didn’t have bruises, she wasn’t living in a small village hut with a mother-in-law who beat her.
“What does Sehaj say about all of it?”
“He doesn’t really get involved.”
“He’s aware of what’s happening and he chooses not to get involved, or he doesn’t know?”
“He doesn’t know,” Shirina lied. She thought about Sehaj glowering while Mother prattled on at the dinner table about another girl that she’d liked on the matrimonial websites. Of course, in the end, it’s up to your son to choose, isn’t it? she had said, reaching across the table to pat Shirina’s hand. And he chose you. She’d said it so sweetly, so kindly, that Shirina wasn’t certain if she was right to be insulted until later, when she was lying awake and the words churned in her mind. Why didn’t you say something? she asked Sehaj, shaking him by the shoulders. He sat up, startled, his eyes glassy from being woken so abruptly, and then mumbled something about how it wasn’t worth the fight.
“Is it something you can talk about with him?” Jezmeen asked.
“Not really,” Shirina said carefully. “It’s difficult getting in the way of a man and his mother, especially when he’s the only person she’s depended on for so long.”
“It’s unfair to you, though,” Jezmeen pointed out. “And to him.”
“I know,” Shirina said, closing her eyes. If Jezmeen knew how much she was sacrificing for the sake of keeping the peace, imagine how outraged she would be. The concern had already evaporated from her face and been replaced with anger on Shirina’s behalf. “It’s a delicate thing. She’s been ill, you know.”
“Has she? What’s wrong?”
“She had surgery on her hip,” Shirina said. “The recovery has been slow and painful. I’ve had to help out a lot. She needs me to help her up the stairs, and she can’t stand for very long, so there’s a lot of housework that piles up.”
On top of your full-time job you’re also playing nurse to your mother-in-law? This was what she expected Jezmeen’s response to be. Incredulous, outraged, positioning her as the fool for accepting so much responsibility. Lauren had looked at Shirina with pity and everything she said afterward sounded so patronizing, as if Shirina wasn’t aware that she had options, that she didn’t have to do this.
But Jezmeen nodded and waited for Shirina to say more. The room was so quiet that Shirina could hear a suitcase being wheeled down the hallway, and the murmurs of new guests as they entered their room. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Shirina said to assure Jezmeen. “It’s been stressful, that’s all, but this is a good break.”
“It’s hardly a break,” Jezmeen reminded her. “We’ve got this itinerary to follow and we’re sequestered in the hotel most evenings because it’s not exactly the friendliest environment for female travelers. This is why I really wanted to take that side trip to Goa—lie on the beach, feel free. It’s not going to happen, though.”
Shirina shrugged as if the idea of lying on a beach didn’t make her want to pack up all her things and flee this instant to the airport. “There will be other holidays. This one is for family,” she said.
“You’re looking forward to meeting Sehaj’s relatives, then? There’s going to be a big welcoming committee and you’re not going to be stuck doing housework with all the other good daughters?”
“It’ll be fine,” Shirina said. “They’re nice people.” In her head, she had invented these extended relatives of Sehaj’s in the same way that she had built up his closer family when they were still getting to know each other online—warm and welcoming, eager to include another one into the flock. Each time she felt a flutter of nerves or anticipation at what awaited her at the doctor’s office in Chandigarh, she replaced the clinic with an image of the family standing outside a sprawling multigenerational home on acres of lush farmland as the car pulled in. They were all waving hello. They couldn’t wait to welcome her home.
Chapter Thirteen
Day Six: Amritsar, Punjab
Awakening the Guru
Before the sun comes up today, you should be at the temple to witness an important ceremony. The Guru Granth Sahib, our Holy Book, is also considered the eleventh and final Guru in Sikhism. Every morning, it is awakened and transported to the temple, where volunteers have already cleaned every inch of the shrine and washed the floor with milk. Watch this ceremony and recite the Lord’s name along with your fellow Sikhs here and everywhere else in the world. Afterward, please do some seva in the kitchen to prepare food for all the people at the temple who have woken up early with you to participate in our Guru’s awakening.
It was so early in the morning that Rajni felt caught in the space between sleeping and waking up, while her consciousness remained under that blanket of nothingness which would eventually dissipate to reveal the day ahead. Packed in a crowd with Jezmeen and Shirina at the temple’s entrance, she waited for the procession to arrive. The atmosphere was solemn yet festive—Rajni could feel the anticipation in the excited whispers surrounding her. “Is it coming? Do you see it?” Jezmeen asked a few times when trumpets blared and the crowd stirred. Shirina tipped her toes and tried to look past the sea of people that seemed to stretch across the city.
The temple, adorned with golden lights and radiating against the dark sky, was even more stunning before the sun rose. Jostling with the other worshippers and edging closer to the sarovar, Rajni found herself facing the temple’s smudged, upside-down reflection. The water caught something indistinct—the essence of the place. She liked it better in this blurry, shape-shifting form. The temple itself was too vivid, like a memory that became sharper and stronger, the more you tried to forget it. In the water, it was just an illusion of lights.
Mobile phones on selfie sticks shot up into the air like eager hands volunteering an answer. The chorus of chanting was approaching. Jezmeen was the tallest of them, and had the advantage of her long arms for taking a photo, but she didn’t. Neither did Shirina. Rajni realized that the only person for whom she would photograph this ceremony was Mum. In her absence, there wasn’t anybody she needed to show this to. She patted her phone in the bag that hung from her waist, and just focused on the chanting. All around her, worshippers had formed a chorus, repeating God’s name, waheguru. Although she only considered herself a spectator, she found her lips moving to the shape of a word which had such history in her household as she was growing up. Mum would sigh waheguru if her backbone cricked as she stood up. She uttered the word after every sneeze and prayer, every misfortune or perceived divine intervention from God. If you were in trouble, all you had to do was say waheguru and God would answer.
Mum explained the eleventh Guru to Rajni when she was a little girl, before Jezmeen and Shirina came along. It was the tenth Guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh, who decided that the final Guru would be a book containing all the hymns and tenets of the religion. The hefty book sat on a special canopied platform in every temple and prayer room, wrapped in layers of shimmering embroidered and tasseled cloth. Only years after Mum told Rajni about the eleventh Guru did she wonder about it. “Why didn’t he want another person after him?” she asked. “He probably knew what people were like,” Mum replied. It was no secret at that point that Mum had little faith in people. Dad’s land in Punjab had been sold and the share of the property which belonged to Mum was being withheld by his family. There were conditions, they claimed, but they only hinted at what these were. Mum decided to make a trip to India. It would be easier to negotiate in person, rather than over brief and expensive long-distance calls. They were already starting to struggle financially with Dad gone.
The chanting grew louder and more excited. Trumpets blasted to herald the book’s arrival. “Here it is,” Jezmeen said, tugging Rajni’s sleeve. A turbaned man with a little boy propped on his shoulders stepped in front of them. Rajni caught only glimpses of the book as the people drew closer, straining their necks and phones to record the view. The book was bound in gold cloth and nestled in the palanquin, every edge of whic
h was propped on the shoulders of men who traveled through a crowd that shifted and parted for each of their steps. The chanting became louder and more jubilant.
The pushing began as the book came closer. People scrambled for the best view, shouldering through and inching forward along with the book. The chanting grew uncomfortably fervent. Sweat poured down Rajni’s back and she became unsteady on her feet. She grabbed her sisters by their elbows and tried to link arms with them but there was suddenly no space to even stretch her arms. “Excuse me,” she said, knowing it was in vain. The crowd swayed and Rajni felt the danger of tipping over and becoming lost under this sea of people. She pressed her feet into the ground and as she tried to push back against the crush of bodies, a sharp and swift pain shot into her ankle. She cried out but nobody heard her. The chanting just continued, waheguru, waheguru, that word that was supposed to heal everything.
The crowd only began to loosen when the book was out of their sight. The moment there was room to move again, Rajni pulled her sisters away from the current of people. “Shouldn’t we stay to hear which hymn the priest reads?” Jezmeen asked.
“It’ll be broadcast everywhere,” Rajni said, still wincing from the pain in her ankle.
“Why didn’t Mum ask us to take part in the ceremony?” Jezmeen asked.
“You wanted to take part in that?” Rajni asked. “It looked pretty intense.”
“We couldn’t anyway,” Shirina said. “Only certain Sikhs are allowed to prepare the shrine. All the people who cleaned it and bathed the floor in milk at two in the morning are baptized.”
“Mostly men, I suppose,” Jezmeen said. “It was only men that carried the palanquin.”
“And it’s mostly men here anyway,” Rajni said, looking around. “There’s either a rule about it or men just pushed their way in.” Mum wasn’t allowed to scatter Dad’s ashes when he died. A couple of distant uncles and cousins in India carried out the final rites instead. “It’s a good thing nobody tried to tell us we couldn’t scatter Mum’s ashes because we’re women.”
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters Page 22