Balli Kaur Jaswal - Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I’m just not that passionate about law.’

‘Not that passionate?’

‘You’re not even trying to understand. You’re just repeating everything I say.’

‘REPEATING EVERYTHING YOU SAY?’

‘Dad,’ Mindi said. ‘Calm down. Please.’

‘I will not—’

‘Mohan, your heart,’ Mum warned.

‘What’s wrong with his heart?’ Nikki asked. She looked at Dad with concern but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

‘Dad’s been having some irregularities. Nothing serious, his EKGs are fine but the blood pressure reading was 140 over 90, which is a little alarming. Then again, there’s a family history of DVT so there are concerns …’ Mindi prattled on. One year into her nursing career and the novelty of using medical jargon at home still hadn’t worn off.

‘What does it mean?’ Nikki asked impatiently.

‘Nothing conclusive. He needs to go in for more tests next week,’ Mindi said.

‘Dad!’ Nikki rushed towards him but he held up his hand, stopping her mid-step.

‘You are ruining everything,’ he said. They were the last words Dad spoke to her. Days later, he and Mum had booked a trip to India even though they had visited only months before. Dad wanted to be with his family, Mum explained.

Gone were the days when Nikki’s parents threatened to send her back to India when she misbehaved; now they exiled themselves. ‘By the time we return, maybe you will have come to your senses,’ Mum said. The comment stung but Nikki was determined not to pick another fight. Her own bags were being discreetly packed. A pub near Olive’s flat in Shepherd’s Bush was looking for a bartender. By the time her parents returned, Nikki would be gone.

Then Dad died in India. The heart condition had been worse than anything the doctors had detected. In traditional Indian morality tales, wayward children were the primary cause of heart conditions, cancerous lumps, hair loss and other ailments in their aggrieved parents. While Nikki wasn’t naïve enough to be convinced that she had given Dad a heart attack, she believed he might have been saved by the follow-up visit in London, which he had postponed to take this hurried trip to India. The guilt gnawed at her insides and made it impossible for Nikki to grieve. At the funeral, she willed for tears to arrive and provide some release but they never did.

Two years on, Nikki still wondered if she had made the right decision. Sometimes she secretly considered returning to her degree even though she couldn’t bear the thought of poring through more case studies or sitting through another droning series of lectures. Perhaps passion and excitement were meant to be secondary to a stable adult life. After all, if arranged marriages could work out, maybe Nikki could muster enthusiasm for something she didn’t love immediately, and then wait for that love to arrive.

In the morning, Nikki emerged from her building to receive a punishing spray of rain across her face. She pulled the faux-fur-lined hood of her jacket over her head and made the grim fifteen-minute march to the train station. Her beloved satchel thumped against her hip. While she was buying a pack of cigarettes at the newsagents, her phone buzzed in her pocket; a message from Olive.

Job at a children’s bookshop. Perfect for you! Saw in yesterday’s paper.

Nikki was touched. Olive had been scanning the job ads ever since Nikki confided that she wasn’t sure if O’Reilly’s would stay in business much longer. The pub already seemed to be on its last legs, its old décor too dingy to be considered hip and its menu no competitor for the trendy café that had opened up next door. Sam O’Reilly spent more time than ever in his small back office, surrounded by reams of receipts and invoices.

Nikki replied.

I saw it too. They want min five yrs sales experience. Need a job to get experience, need experience to get a job – madness!

Olive didn’t reply. A trainee secondary teacher, her weekday communication was sporadic. Nikki had considered studying to be a teacher but each time she heard Olive talk about her rowdy students, she was thankful that she only had to manage the occasional swaying drunkard at O’Reilly’s.

Nikki typed another message.

Will see you at the pub tonight? You wouldn’t believe where I’m off to – Southall!!

She stubbed out her cigarette and joined the rush hour crowd to board the train.

During the journey, Nikki watched as London fell away, brick buildings replaced by stretches of scrapyards and industrial lots as the train rushed westwards. One of the final stations on the line, Southall’s welcome sign was printed in both English and Punjabi. She was drawn to the Punjabi one first, surprised by the familiarity of those curls and twists. Those summer lessons in India had included learning to read and write Gurmukhi script, a useful party trick later in life when she wrote her English friends’ names in Punjabi on bar napkins in exchange for free drinks.

Through the windows of the connecting bus to the temple, the sight of more bilingual signs on shop fronts gave Nikki a slight headache and the sensation of being split in two parts. British, Indian. There had been family day trips here in her early childhood – a wedding at the temple, or a shopping trip dedicated to finding fresh curry spices. Nikki recalled the confused conversations of these trips as Mum and Dad seemed to both love and loathe being amongst their country folk: wouldn’t it be nice to have Punjabi neighbours? But what was the point of moving to England then? As North London had taken the shape of home to her parents, there were fewer reasons to visit Southall, which faded to their pasts along with India itself. Now a bhangra bass beat throbbed from the car in the next lane. In a textile merchant’s window, a row of glittering sari-clad mannequins smiled demurely at passers-by. Vegetable markets spilled out onto the pavement and hot steam rose from a samosa vendor’s cart on the street corner. Nothing had changed.

At one stop, a group of secondary school girls boarded. They giggled and spoke over each other and when the bus lurched suddenly, they flew forwards with a collective shriek. ‘Fuckin’ hell!’ one girl yelped. The other girls laughed but their noise faded quickly when they noticed the glares of two turbaned men sitting across from Nikki. The girls nudged each other to be quiet.

‘Have some respect,’ somebody hissed. Nikki turned to see an elderly woman giving the girls a withering look as they ducked past.

Most passengers alighted the bus with Nikki at the gurdwara. Its golden dome glinted against the stone-grey clouds and brilliant sapphire and orange curlicues filled the stained-glass windows on the second floor. The Victorian terraces that surrounded the temple looked like toys in comparison to this majestic white building. Nikki itched for a cigarette, but there were too many eyes here. She felt them on her back as she overtook a pack of white-haired women who slowly made their way from the bus stop to the temple’s arched entrance. The ceilings in this vast building had seemed infinite when she was a child and they were still dizzyingly high. A faint echo of chanting floated from the prayer hall. Nikki took the scarf out of her bag and draped it over her head. This temple’s foyer had been renovated since her last visit years ago and the location of the noticeboards was not immediately obvious. She wandered around for a while but avoided asking for directions. She had once entered a church in Islington looking for directions and made the mistake of telling the minister that she had lost her way. The ensuing conversation about locating her inner spirituality took forty-five minutes and did nothing to point her towards the Victoria line.