The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

Jezmeen sighed. She tried to sympathize – after all, during her paranoia stage, she had driven herself to A&E over a chest pain that turned out to be nothing but a reflux reaction to some salsa. But Rajni’s aversion to India was so … wimpy. Ever since their pilgrimage plans were confirmed, Rajni had made a regular habit of forwarding cautionary articles. ‘Make sure you bring hand sanitizer from home – not sure if we can trust the local brands!’ read one subject line. ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?’ read another. The email contained links to a story about a bridge that had collapsed in a rural northern town. Rajni’s India was a land of disasters.

‘We’ll go ahead then,’ Jezmeen said. ‘Hope you get better soon.’ Rajni sniffed loudly, mumbled her thanks and shut the door. Jezmeen stood there for a moment, contemplating her choices. Leave it or not? She knocked again. Rajni opened the door widely this time. Her eyes were puffy. It was clear that she’d been crying.

‘Oh, Raj. I’m sorry,’ Jezmeen stuttered. ‘I didn’t think …’

Rajni shut the door in her face.

Jezmeen stood in the hallway, stunned. She had never seen Rajni crying, not even during Mum’s funeral. Her eyes had been bloodshot but it was clear that she had taken the time to cry in private before the ceremony. Did Rajni also blink sometimes and see Mum leaning over the edge of her bed, reaching for her jewellery case? Jezmeen woke abruptly some nights because that moment played back in her dreams, the details slightly different each time. Her subconscious exchanged the pale-pink colour of the hospital-room curtains for a cheery yellow and moved the dresser a few inches away, so Mum struggled to reach it and gave up. But even when Jezmeen was aware she was dreaming, she could never wake up before Mum died. That conclusion repeated itself in an infinite loop.

Jezmeen knocked on the door. ‘Raj?’ You can talk to me, she was about to say, but could she? She didn’t know how they’d begin to talk about Mum’s death and she suspected she knew how it would end – yet another fight.

Bargaining required no shortage of confidence. You had to be assured that you were in the right from the start, and willing to walk away from the item because pride was more important than purchase. This was why Shirina tried not to get too attached to anything she saw at the market – she didn’t want to get into an argument like Jezmeen was having right now, which was verging on violence.

‘You’re expecting me to pay that much for these cheap chappal? Look at the workmanship. Look at these threads poking out.’ Jezmeen waved a shoe in the shopkeeper’s face. Rhinestones marched a path along overlapping plastic straps towards a shimmering plastic gem set in the centre. ‘Cut the price in half and we’ll talk.’

‘In half?’ the shopkeeper screeched. Shirina realized immediately that she’d underestimated him. He rolled up his sleeves as if listing the shoes’ attributes was just as physically demanding as making them. Jezmeen did not look intimidated. As they continued to argue, the centrepiece came loose from the sandal and plopped to the dusty ground between them.

‘We’re done,’ Jezmeen declared triumphantly, throwing her hands up and washing them clean of the sandals. She took Shirina’s hand and led her to another stall. It was like being children again, except Jezmeen had always left Shirina trailing far behind. She held on tight. This was not a place where she wanted to get lost. The market bustled with chaos and it was full of men wandering in packs, their eyes sometimes connecting with Shirina’s, at which point she hastily looked away. A stray dog with a ladder of ribs showing through his dingy fur weaved between two parked motorbikes at the side of the road. The row of shops seemed to stretch for miles, and where it ended, the main road was choked in peak-hour madness. She and Jezmeen had walked here, their feet traversing pavements that whittled into slivers and then vanished altogether, only to appear once more a few moments later.

‘Honestly, they were bloody ugly shoes, weren’t they?’ Jezmeen muttered to Shirina.

‘Why waste all that effort bargaining then?’ Shirina asked.

‘Sharpening my skills,’ Jezmeen said. ‘Look around. There’s so much to buy.’

It was overwhelming – the columns of sari fabric and their dizzying brocade patterns, entire wall displays of glittering bangles in every possible shade. In a magazine, Shirina had once seen a sari made up entirely of tiny squares of every colour. Every single shade and variation in existence. It was beautiful and novel, but also functional, the designer’s write-up explained. Women could wear the sari on their next trip to the tailor and pick out the exact colour they wanted from this wearable palette.

‘I do need a pair of cheap sandals though,’ Jezmeen said. ‘I don’t mind if they’re a little gaudy, although those were just hideous. I need a decoy for the temple.’

Shirina smiled. She remembered shoe decoys from when they were young. It was always wise to wear your least expensive shoes to the gurdwara lest they get ‘lost’ or swiped from the cubbies outside. But they had to be presentable as well – tattered old Converse runners did not complete the Punjabi ensemble.

‘Italian leather,’ Shirina said, in a high-pitched imitation of their childhood friend, Sharanjeet Kaur.

‘Custom-fitted with a one-of-a-kind in-sole,’ Jezmeen replied in a matching pitch.

‘Designed by our personal cobbler.’

Jezmeen and Shirina both laughed. This was how they used to be, kicking each other under the covers and listening out for Rajni’s footsteps. It was when Jezmeen started getting them into too much trouble that they started drifting apart. The first time Shirina told Sehaj she had sisters, she expected him to ask her what they were like, but he didn’t really want to know about them. He was an only child, and she envied his untethered existence. For Shirina, at least until she stopped following Jezmeen around, having a sister meant being complicit in schemes and being seen as part of a pair rather than an individual.

‘I wonder what Sharanjeet is up to these days,’ Jezmeen said. ‘What a bloody snob. Marries a rich guy and all of a sudden she’s name-dropping her designer at your wedding and talking about her holiday house in the South of France. And that fuss she made after the ceremony when she couldn’t find their shoes right away, like we had stolen them. Wasn’t that long ago that she was a restaurant hostess.’

‘I don’t think she came to the wedding for me,’ Shirina said. ‘She wanted to rub shoulders with Sehaj’s family.’ Shirina had been surprised at Sharanjeet’s appearance at all of her wedding events. A childhood friend who had disappeared once she got married, she was eager to reconnect with Shirina when she discovered whose family she was marrying into.

‘Have you stayed in touch since then?’ Jezmeen asked.

Shirina shook her head. ‘I know she named her daughter Chanel,’ she said.

Jezmeen rolled her eyes. ‘I saw pictures of Chanel on her Instagram account. I think Sharanjeet blocked me at some point, though. I haven’t seen anything from her in ages.’

‘I’m sure it’s all really superficial anyway.’ Shirina said this with a shrug, as if she had lost track of Sharanjeet as well. She didn’t want Jezmeen knowing that although she appeared inactive on social media, she still logged in to look up people like Sharanjeet, who publicized every inch of her privileged life. There were snapshots of designer bags and posed ‘deep-thinking’ pictures on the golden sands of Mediterranean beaches. The chorus of comments from Sharanjeet’s friends and followers was openly envious and admiring. With nobody questioning what Sharanjeet’s life was really like, Shirina felt petty doing so. Surely there were days when she fought with her husband or spent the afternoon simply waiting for the plumber to show up to fix the leaky tap was that driving her mad – but her pictures presented a life so unspoiled that Shirina didn’t mind only believing in this version of it.

‘You know who else recently had a baby?’ Jezmeen said as they followed the current of the crowd. ‘Auntie Roopi’s daughter. She added me on Facebook recently.’

‘Our old neighbour, Auntie Roopi?’

‘Yup, from across the street. We stayed with her one summer, but you’re probably too little to remember that. She had a cat that you desperately wanted to bring back to our house.’

Shirina vaguely recalled this cat, and the scent of channa masala bubbling on a stove in a kitchen that was bigger than theirs. She remembered going to Auntie Roopi’s house sometimes but didn’t remember living there. ‘Why did we stay with her?’

‘Mum and Rajni went to India together. It was shortly after Dad died. I think they were gone for about a month.’

An image was beginning to surface: tickling competitions with Jezmeen and the cat: the cat flicking its tail at their ankles while they struggled to keep straight faces. Shirina was about four or five, and they were over at Auntie Roopi’s, having lunch. Auntie Roopi let them watch cartoons while she bustled around the house with a vacuum cleaner. At one point, she crossed the living room, blocking the television for a moment while she peered through the curtains. ‘Your Mum’s still away,’ she said. ‘You can stay for dinner.’ But Mum was home all day, and the curtains of their house were always drawn, so Auntie Roopi was just saying that for their benefit. Shirina and Jezmeen came home eventually to find Mum lying in bed, in the same place she’d been when they left. Rajni had told them off afterwards for upsetting Mum, and said to Jezmeen, ‘I expect better behaviour from you from now on.’

It seemed that Jezmeen was remembering the same thing, because she said, ‘Rajni was so strict with us when we were little.’

With you, Shirina thought. She learned it was better to avoid trouble after that incident, even if it meant also avoiding Jezmeen. ‘I suppose she was just helping Mum,’ Shirina said. ‘She probably felt she needed to help raise us since Dad wasn’t around.’

‘Oh sure, lots of things had to change after Dad died,’ Jezmeen said. ‘But she used to be more fun. You wouldn’t know it now, but Rajni was cool. She had this stash of sparkly eye shadows and bold lipsticks – the sort of thing Mum probably wouldn’t let her wear, because I remember she always kept it hidden and didn’t tell me where it was. She used to put it on me sometimes, and we’d dance around in her room. I was probably four years old then.’

It didn’t sound like the Rajni that Shirina knew, and she was surprised to hear Jezmeen remember her this way. ‘What changed?’

Jezmeen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Dad’s death, maybe? She and Mum fought a lot after that. There was also a visit from Dad’s older brother before that, and that sparked a couple of arguments. They went to India the summer after Dad died. I remember she was really quiet when she came back from India with Mum and then soon after that, she was taking charge and being Sergeant Rajni – all about following the rules. And I have been resisting her ever since.’

Jezmeen said this with some pride, but any mention of Shirina’s childhood, especially the teenage years, called to mind the sound of her sisters shouting. The arguments were so hostile and belligerent on both sides that it always felt as if the walls of their house were on the verge of collapsing. She had never fought with Rajni or Mum like that. She certainly refrained from taking every piece of bait her mother-in-law dangled before her; it was easier to say yes than to fight every battle. Life was so much more complicated if you always had to win. She recalled an Instagram post of Sharanjeet’s from Christmas last year – mulled wine, a stack of presents wrapped with gold ribbons and the soft glow of a fire in the background. Baby, it’s cold outside, but my love knows just how to keep me warm, the caption read, followed by a litany of hashtags: #winter #fireplace #mulledwine #xmascountdown #love #family #pressies #tiffanys #besthusbandever #besthubbyever #spoiled #butimworthit. Shirina had read the caption over and over again. Painstaking selection of filters enhanced the picture so she could almost hear the firewood crackling gently. Shirina had been so absorbed in the world of Sharanjeet’s life that she only vaguely registered Mother talking behind her. Look at me when I talk to you, Mother snapped, plucking the phone from her hand. It gave Shirina a small fright, because she hadn’t realized the conversation wasn’t over. Later, she told Sehaj about it, who frowned and said, ‘I’ll talk to her.’

‘Ah, there it is. Madhuri Fashions,’ Jezmeen said, nodding at a stall with magazine cut-outs pasted on its walls above a sewing machine. An elderly man stooped over the machine, tiny gold-framed spectacles perched on the tip of his nose. For his sake, Shirina hoped that the bargaining process would be reasonable. ‘I’ll be in there,’ she said, pointing to the bookshop next door.

Books were crammed into every space, making them impossible to remove. When a title caught Shirina’s eye, she extracted it with her fingernails. ‘Yes,’ the bookshop owner said. ‘Very good story.’

‘You’ve read this?’ she asked. It seemed unlikely. The title – Mister Right Now – was in raised pink lettering and didn’t exactly shout this man as its demographic.

‘I’ve read them all,’ he said.

Well, that was impossible. There were too many books here for one person to have read in a lifetime. There were books in German and some in Scandinavian languages too, left here by tourists probably. His earnestness was admirable though. Probably sensing that Shirina didn’t believe him, he started pointing to the spines of books and giving her a brief synopsis of each.

‘Very bad man starts a corrupt business. Mafia bosses turn against him. He becomes very good man.

‘This one: a family moves into a new house after the father loses his job and they find out it is haunted.

‘A scientist starts a research station in some faraway country and spends thirty years there trying to find out what happened to his lost love.’

Shirina was amazed until she realized she had no way of verifying his claim. She nodded. ‘Okay, okay,’ she said, signalling with a wave that she had given up doubting him.

‘Buy a book and I will also give you a numerology reading,’ the man said, pointing at a little sign next to his cash box. ‘When is your birthday?’

‘May 10th, 1990,’ Shirina said.

He repeated the date and tapped rapidly on a calculator. ‘Your life path number is seven,’ he said. ‘Seven is a good number.’