The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

The punishing heat burned through Jezmeen’s clothes. They returned to the lobby and sank into the plush sofas. The air bore the potent smell of disinfectant. At the reception desk, a woman wearing a red blazer held the phone to her ear. ‘This is your wake-up call, sir,’ she said and then she nodded and replaced the receiver.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Rajni asked.

‘A few hours,’ Jezmeen said. ‘You?’

‘I never sleep well in hotels.’

The television screen mounted on the wall flashed brightly. It was the morning news but the presenter only took up a small square on the screen. Banner ads rolled across the length of the screen and neon columns showed the latest stock market figures. It was like watching a casino machine.

‘I was watching one of those sing-along shows on TV last night,’ Jezmeen said. ‘Mum loved those.’

‘Mum and Dad used to watch them together,’ Rajni said. ‘Dad would hum along and Mum would shush him for ruining the song.’

Jezmeen smiled. ‘I think I remember that.’ It was hard to know which early memories were hers and which were constructed by Rajni’s recollections but she thought she could hear Dad’s off-key humming. She was only five years old when he died, and sometimes she envied Rajni for having known Dad for so many more years. Jezmeen longed to say things like, ‘I got my laugh from my father,’ or ‘My father used to say that.’ A sense of legacy would help her feel less lost, especially now that Mum was gone too.

‘I do the same thing now when those shows come on,’ Rajni said.

‘You hum along?’

‘I shush Kabir.’

No surprise there. ‘And does Anil watch as well?’

‘He did when he was little. Now he pops in his earphones and just watches whatever he wants on the iPad.’

That sounded like Anil – hypnotized by a world beyond his parents’ living room. Since he hit adolescence, Jezmeen had only seen about three emotions register on her nephew’s face: sullen, bored and enthralled (but only by whatever was on his phone). His intrigue factor had spiked only briefly over the weekend when she spotted him skulking around the perfume counter at the mall. Excited that he might have a girlfriend (and at the prospect of torturing Rajni with the info), Jezmeen had waited for him to leave before sidling up to the counter girl to get the scoop. ‘He wanted something mature,’ she sighed, throwing a sorrowful look at the Sugar N Spice line for teen girls. Jezmeen was disappointed too. All of that anticipation and Anil turned out to be buying a gift for his mother, whose birthday was next month.

‘Should we call Shirina again or something?’ Jezmeen asked. ‘She might have gone back to sleep.’

‘Give her ten minutes,’ Rajni said. She glanced towards the hotel lifts. ‘Do you think it’s weird that she didn’t tell us about visiting Sehaj’s family till yesterday?’

Jezmeen shrugged. ‘Maybe she got the dates confused. It sounds like she’s been really busy.’

Rajni frowned. She didn’t look satisfied with this response, and truthfully, neither was Jezmeen, but it seemed that Shirina had become another casualty to marriage, like so many other women Jezmeen knew. Appointments were never set in stone and they often brought their partners along to dinner at the last minute.

‘Is it just me, or does she look … different?’ Rajni asked.

‘She’s gained weight, hasn’t she?’ Jezmeen said. She wanted to sound concerned but she could hear the glee in her voice. Shame on you, a voice scolded Jezmeen.

‘I was thinking more about those dark circles under her eyes. She looks worn out.’ There was pleasure in Rajni’s tone as well. Jezmeen decided it couldn’t be helped. All their lives, Shirina never had a blemish – on her face or her character. If they had to be petty to find one – or two! – so be it.

‘I feel bad,’ Jezmeen said anyway. ‘Maybe something’s going on.’ That would certainly be interesting. After a lifetime of meeting parental expectations, Shirina was long overdue for a crisis. Develop a pill addiction. Join a cult. Something. It would certainly take the pressure off Jezmeen to be the default family screw-up.

‘I gained a bit of weight in the year after I got married as well,’ Rajni said. ‘If anything, it’s good to see some meat on her bones again. She was so skinny for her wedding. Near the end, she was on a steady diet of leaves and broth.’

Rajni had a point. Shirina had been a little obsessed with her figure. ‘I remember going over to Mum’s to help decorate the house for the wedding a couple of days before Sehaj’s relatives arrived. She’d bought all those fairy lights, which took ages to put up and we lost track of time and ordered pizza. Shirina ate one slice and then went to the gym for two hours,’ Jezmeen recalled. She had admired and secretly envied Shirina’s discipline. At an audition the next day, Jezmeen had to suck in her tummy to prevent the casting director from seeing the paunch created by her six slices. She didn’t get the role.

‘She’d tell us if she was pregnant, wouldn’t she?’ Rajni asked.

‘Shirina’s quite private about her life these days,’ Jezmeen reminded Rajni. Shirina hadn’t told them anything about searching for an arranged marriage online. She never even mentioned her courtship with Sehaj – all six months of it – until he came to London to meet her in person and proposed on their second date. Everything happened quickly from that point and nobody objected because Sehaj was such a catch – good-looking, wealthy, and from a respected family. Then she said yes, and moved all the way to Australia. If that wasn’t an effort to keep her distance from her family, Jezmeen didn’t know what was.

‘That’s not something she’d keep from us though,’ Rajni said.

‘Probably not, but I don’t think we’re necessarily the first to know about things with Shirina.’ Were we ever? Jezmeen wondered. For as long as she could remember, Shirina had preferred to keep her thoughts and emotions closely guarded. Next to her, Jezmeen always felt like she was exaggerating whenever she expressed her (admittedly wide and varied range of) emotions.

‘I wish it weren’t like that,’ Rajni replied.

Jezmeen shrugged. ‘It’s her choice,’ she said, although she had been hurt when Shirina announced her engagement. Why didn’t she even tell Jezmeen she was seeing someone?

‘It’s a shame if we can’t communicate. I’d like to think we can talk about things with each other.’

Jezmeen noticed that Rajni had turned to face her and was giving her a Meaningful Look. Oh, don’t you dare, she thought. They were not going to talk about Mum in the same space as speculating over Shirina’s weight gain. In fact, Jezmeen was determined to not discuss Mum’s final moments with anyone, least of all Rajni.

‘The weight gain is probably just a post-wedding thing,’ Jezmeen said. She made a deliberate shift towards the television screen and stared intently at it. The flashing graphics gave her an instant headache but at least Rajni couldn’t try to engage her in any more conversation. The newscaster wore a grim expression, which belied the brilliant hues of her sari and the ticker speeding across the screen announcing the engagement of two Bollywood stars.

When Shirina finally joined them in the lobby at 8.30 a.m., Jezmeen noticed the dark circles under her eyes were gone. Her lips shone with pink gloss and a touch of rouge, which brightened up her face. She was the only one of them wearing a traditional salwar-kameez, with her long hair also pulled back in a bun. The weight gain was still there though, a roundness in her cheeks that actually made her look – Jezmeen felt a twinge of jealousy – a little bit prettier.

It was a short distance from the hotel to the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib but the roads were already clogged with traffic by the time they left the hotel. The taxi could only inch along the wide boulevard under the Karol Bagh Metro bridge. The driver’s window was rolled down, letting in the sound of every puttering engine and trilling horn. People dodged around vehicles, taking their chances every time there was a pause in traffic. Heat shimmered atop the silver surfaces of street vendors’ carts as the taxi crawled along. Shirina’s mouth watered when she caught a whiff of pakoras being deep-fried in bubbling oil.

On the taxi’s dashboard, a multicoloured row of miniature plastic deities created a shrine to Hinduism. It looked like the dashboard of that taxi Shirina had taken home from after-work drinks in Melbourne one night, except it was populated with icons and symbols from all religions, plus one Pokémon bobblehead. Too much wine on an empty stomach had made Shirina chatty that night.

‘Do these guys join forces to protect you?’ she’d asked the driver.

‘Yes,’ he said with a laugh. ‘More religions, more power.’

‘What’s your actual religion then?’

‘I’m Muslim,’ he said. ‘From Somalia. You?’

‘Sikh,’ Shirina replied. ‘From Britain by way of India.’ She spotted a small card bearing Guru Nanak’s picture between a miniature Buddha and a little Arabic scroll on the dashboard and pointed him out. ‘He’s one of mine,’ she said. ‘My mum always said just think of God as your father but that’s wrong, I think.’ The words just kept tumbling out of her mouth. ‘My father died when I was just two.’

The outburst was met with silence. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

The driver waited until he reached a traffic light before turning around, his warm, kind eyes meeting Shirina’s. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘In my car, you have countless blessings.’

Now Shirina focused her attention on the sprawl of Delhi. Shops were stacked like uneven bricks with shouting block-lettered signs: ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTITUTE; ALIYAH’S BEAUTY SCHOOL; ICCS TECH SOLUTIONS. Simpler services took place under the Karol Bagh Metro tracks – a barber arranged his tools on a low wooden stool and beckoned his first customer from a small crowd of men; a pair of toddlers, naked from the waist down, their limbs coated in soot, helped their mother sort through a pile of plastic bottles.

The road ahead narrowed and widened inexplicably, its borders determined by the debris that spilled out onto the edges – benches from chai stalls, a rusty abandoned wheelbarrow overflowing with rubbish. Rising behind them was a skyline of anaemic pink and beige buildings. The potholed surfaces of the road made Shirina jostle with her sisters in the back seat. A few times, she caught the driver looking at their reflections in the rear-view mirror and she realized his eyes were tracking the movements of their jiggling breasts.

‘Not obvious at all, mate,’ Jezmeen muttered but she shifted to occupy more space in the mirror.

‘You know what you’re supposed to say to put them in their place, right?’ Rajni said to Shirina. ‘“Don’t you have a sister? Don’t you have a mother?”’ Hearing these English words, the driver focused back on the road. ‘See? It works.’

‘So it’s our job to summon a woman the men own in some way?’ Jezmeen retorted.

This thought occurred to Shirina too but she suppressed it, knowing that this type of argument belonged in a different place. It was the sort of thing her friend Lauren from work would say. The driver’s eyes locked with Shirina’s. She adjusted her dupatta so it concealed her chest. An easy solution. Nothing needed to be said.

Worshippers and tourists were already milling about outside the gurdwara when they pulled up. ‘Water, water, cold cold water,’ called a man pushing a cart full of plastic bottles. Taut muscles bulged through the sheen of sweat on his skinny calves. A marbled walkway led the sisters away from the tangle of cars and people on the street. The temple was tiered and white like a wedding cake, finished with golden caramel on the domes. Nearby, the water of the sarovar rippled gently, catching flecks of sunlight.

First they had to deposit their shoes at a counter, which they swapped for metal tags. Then they returned to the gurdwara’s entrance and stepped in a shallow trough to clean their feet. They climbed the carpeted stairs and shuffled along with the crowd into the prayer hall. Ceiling fans and chandeliers dangled from the hall’s roof and the floor was covered in soft red carpet. At the centre was an elaborate golden trellis, its patterns delicate like embroidery. Three men sat cross-legged there, thumping on tablas and singing holy hymns. The Guru Granth Sahib lay open on a gilded platform, its pages framed by a thick garland of marigolds. Shirina found a small space to bow, touch her head to the floor and then slip her small tithing into the bank.

Pushing herself to her feet again, Shirina felt the discomfort of her padded body. This weight gain gave her an imbalance she was unused to. She stumbled slightly, and recovered. She sneaked a look at Jezmeen and Rajni to see if they had noticed, but they were pressing their own foreheads to the floor and making their donations. Hopefully she was concealing it well enough but if anybody asked, she’d say, ‘Just a bit of winter weight. I need to cut back.’ She’d laugh and look embarrassed so they’d know she was trying and hopefully, they would know to drop the subject. The other day, she had made the mistake of opening her wedding album again and afterwards, she was unable to look at herself in the mirror, saddened by her fuller cheeks and her collarbone fading behind a new layer of skin.

Shirina had wanted to dive into those photographs and make her wedding day come to life again. As soon as she and Rajni and Jezmeen found a place to sit, she closed her eyes and little snapshots of the ceremony rushed into her consciousness. Her hennaed feet poking out from under a full lengha skirt that floated as she stepped closer to the altar; the walk around the Holy Book with Sehaj as their guests looked on approvingly. Peering out from under her heavily jewelled dupatta, she had been so pleased to see the abundance of her husband’s guests – cousins, uncles, nephews, aunties, two sets of grandparents. They had flown a long way to see the firstborn son of the family get married, and when she presented herself in those glorious bridal adornments, she felt as if she had earned her place. She couldn’t help comparing them to her own threadbare family – a smattering of distant relatives, her widowed mother, two sisters, always bickering, never just listening to one another. ‘Do your family members get along?’ she’d asked Sehaj after they met on the Sikh matrimonial website and arranged a phone call. ‘We rarely argue,’ he’d replied. ‘What’s that like?’ she’d asked. He thought she was joking. He told her that he had always had a good relationship with his mother. ‘After my father died when I was sixteen, my mother and I became even closer,’ he said.

That was when Shirina decided she wanted to keep getting to know Sehaj. She reminded herself not to get her hopes up; there were countless stories on the arranged marriage message boards about men being nothing like the pictures and personas they presented online. During the next conversation, she asked if they could do a video call, and she was both relieved and thrilled to see that Sehaj’s handsome profile photo had not been altered or taken ten years ago during a fitter phase – there was not so much as a receding hairline to distinguish the live person on her screen from the one in the picture on her Successful Matches list on the matrimonial site. Not wanting to seem desperate though, Shirina waited for Sehaj to initiate the first in-person meeting. After a few months of chatting on the phone, he finally said he wanted to come to London to see her. Again, Shirina was relieved to see that Sehaj was real, and just as much a gentleman as he was on the phone. He opened doors for her, kissed her lightly on the cheek at the end of their first date, and told her he was looking forward to seeing her again.

At one point, Shirina was bold enough to ask how Sehaj was still single. He was certainly the most eligible bachelor on the matrimonial site, and his membership had been active for a year before Shirina came along. ‘There were other girls,’ Sehaj shrugged. ‘But they balked at the idea of living with my mother. I can’t compromise on that though. She’s family, and that’s what I’m here for – if I don’t look after her, who will?’ Shirina thought it was sweet. She only met her mother-in-law for the first time at the wedding ceremony. Mother had pressed her palms to Shirina’s cheeks so lovingly, and said, ‘You are our daughter now.’

Shirina opened her eyes. The hall was filled with people she didn’t know and her disappointment at being thrown back into the present was profound. She looked at her hands and noticed the flesh of her ring finger bulging around her gold wedding band. It was heat that made her fingers swell but she wiggled the ring, struggling at the knot of her knuckle. It was a relief that it came loose eventually, but she quickly pushed it back on. The men at the altar thumped the heels of their hands rapidly against the tight skins of their tablas. Each beat had an echo that bounced across the walls.

The memory that had surfaced in the cab was niggling at Shirina, filling the spaces between musical notes. She wished she knew how to pray but it was too late to learn now – it was like getting in touch with a neglected friend just to request a favour. And what could she pray for? That night had been her fault – for drinking so much, for stumbling up the driveway, for making the driver so concerned that he threw on his brakes and followed her. ‘You’re okay, one step at a time,’ he said, just a pace behind her, his hands hovering at her waist, braced for a fall but not actually touching her. She had struggled to find her keys so he reached into her bag to help her. She remembered leaning towards him, just to rest her head on his chest for a moment because she could fall asleep right there. The bag was squished between them. ‘Hey,’ the driver said with a nervous laugh. ‘Wake up.’ Then the door opened anyway.

‘Shirina,’ Jezmeen whispered. ‘Are those guys looking at us?’ Shirina followed her gaze and saw a group of young men sitting cross-legged and staring at them, their lips twitching into smiles. ‘They are, aren’t they?’

‘They’re looking at you,’ Shirina said, which was true but it was also what Jezmeen wanted to hear. Shirina adjusted her dupatta again, this time so it obscured her profile.

‘Do you think people here would mistake me for Polly Mishra?’ Jezmeen wondered aloud. ‘Or does that happen more in the UK because there are so few Indian women on television?’

‘You do look alike,’ Shirina said.

‘That’s the problem,’ Jezmeen said with a sigh. ‘There can only be one actress with our looks. She’s had better luck than me, getting such a great break with The Boathouse.’

Sure, luck had some small role to play in Polly’s success but Shirina had watched several episodes of The Boathouse and thought Polly was brilliant in it. She knew better than to say this to Jezmeen, who was sensitive about the whole rivalry. She had once read a celebrity blog site referring to Jezmeen as ‘the poor man’s Polly Mishra’.

Jezmeen was considering something now. ‘Do you think, if I went up to those guys now and pretended to be Polly, they’d know the difference?’

‘Jezmeen, this isn’t the place to be impersonating actresses,’ Rajni said.

‘What is a place to be impersonating actresses, Rajni? I’m curious.’

‘People come here to worship,’ Rajni reminded her.

‘Does it matter?’ Jezmeen asked.

‘Of course it matters.’

‘We’re not exactly sitting here praying. I’ve spent the past ten minutes mentally revising my Christmas party invitation list.’

‘It’s July,’ Rajni said accusingly.

The guy in the middle said something to his friend and grinned. He took out his phone and pointed it at Jezmeen. The flash went off. ‘Now that’s just rude,’ Jezmeen said. She sprang to her feet and marched across the prayer hall. ‘Oh my god,’ Shirina said. She glanced at the bearded granthi serenely reading from the Holy Book, his cadence as hypnotic as a gentle tide. Now would be a good time to take up prayer.

Rajni went after Jezmeen, muttering something about inappropriate behaviour in the temple. One of the tabla players looked up and met eyes with Shirina. She gave him an apologetic smile. He shut his eyes, tipped his face towards the ceiling, and let out a string of melodic drumbeats. She got up and followed her sisters.

‘Hello there,’ Jezmeen said when they approached the men. She smiled sweetly. ‘I noticed you took a picture of me and I thought you might like a close-up.’

The men exchanged looks and two of them were suddenly sheepish. Shirina noticed that they were younger than she’d thought – just boys. One had the patchy beginnings of a beard on his bony chin and the other was wearing a Star Wars T-shirt.

‘So?’ Jezmeen pressed. She placed one hand on her hip. ‘Let’s not be shy now.’

People were beginning to stare. Shirina tugged her sister’s sleeve. ‘Jezmeen, this is embarrassing.’

‘Jezmeen Shergill,’ one boy said. He was the one wearing the Star Wars shirt. ‘So it is you.’

His British accent took Shirina by surprise. Jezmeen said nothing. The boy kept watching her, a slow grin spreading on his face. His friends were hiding their smiles behind their hands. The tabla thumped like a heartbeat.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ Jezmeen said. ‘Just because I’m on television, it doesn’t give you the right—’

‘I’m a huge fan,’ the boy continued.

Shirina caught the boy with the patchy facial hair discreetly pulling his phone from his pocket. When he noticed her looking, he dropped his hands.

‘Really?’ Jezmeen asked.

The smirk on Star Wars boy’s face made Shirina nervous.

‘Can we get a photo with you?’ he asked.

Rajni poked her head between them. ‘She’s not Polly Mishra.’

‘They know, Rajni,’ Jezmeen said. ‘He said my name. Are you boys fans of the show? Here, let’s take a quick selfie together, and—’

The boys began to snicker and nudge each other again. ‘Do it,’ Star Wars boy whispered to the boy with patchy facial hair.

The boy let out a theatrical sigh. ‘Oh, Jezmeen Shergill,’ he said, ‘I was dying to meet you.’ And then he stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes and flapped his hands. The other boys collapsed into laughter.

What the hell was he doing? Shirina stared at the boys, forgetting for a moment where they were and how much disruption they were creating. The boys scrambled to their feet and out of the hall. Jezmeen’s face was ashen.

‘You alright?’ Shirina asked, still puzzled. She reached out but Jezmeen’s shoulder flinched at her touch. Jezmeen turned away, pulling her phone from her bag and tapping away rapidly.

‘I wonder where their parents are,’ Rajni remarked, looking over her shoulder at the boys. ‘I’d like to have a word with them.’

‘Just drop it,’ Jezmeen said, not looking up from her phone.

‘They’re obviously here on holidays with family – you’d think their parents brought them here to get some spiritual enlightenment, not sit around—’

‘I said, “drop it”,’ Jezmeen said. Her eyes were blazing. ‘Oh my god,’ she whispered. ‘A hundred thousand.’

It meant nothing to Shirina. She looked at Rajni, who looked just as perplexed.

They stood for a while in tense silence. A pair of women walked past, looking at them curiously. Shirina was conscious of the scene they were probably presenting to passers-by – three sisters at an impasse in a terrible family argument.

‘Why don’t we just start our work at the langar hall?’ Shirina suggested brightly, eager to dismantle this tableau.

‘I’ll join you both in a few minutes,’ Jezmeen said. Shirina and Rajni watched as she turned around and pushed her way out through the stream of people entering the prayer hall.

‘Should one of us follow her?’ Shirina asked.

Rajni shook her head and sighed. ‘It’s Jezmeen,’ she said. A sufficient explanation for Shirina. Jezmeen existed in her own sphere, and trying to understand her crises was like walking late into a house party where all the other guests had already become friends. Over the past few years, Shirina’s sense of solitude had grown more profound as Jezmeen chased auditions and pined to be noticed. Sometimes she forgot that they used to talk to each other more, because every conversation that Shirina could recall having with Jezmeen in adulthood was about Jezmeen: what she was doing, where she was going, what she wanted. Jezmeen never really thought about the consequences of her actions for other people. They were a long way now from when they’d been little girls, staying up so late into the night playing and chatting that Mum more or less gave up on setting a proper bedtime. When was the last time Shirina went breathless from giggling with Jezmeen? You two, knock it off and go to bed now, Rajni would call from downstairs, so much sterner and scarier than Mum. They would pretend to oblige, reducing their voices to whispers, which inevitably became louder until Rajni marched up the stairs to tell them off again.