Balli Jaswal - The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

‘Hi, how do I call another room?’ she asked when the receptionist picked up.

‘You dial their room number,’ she said in a tone that suggested Jezmeen was very thick.

‘I tried that … Never mind. Thanks,’ she said. After hanging up, she tried Shirina and by some miracle, got connected.

‘Hello,’ Shirina said.

‘Hey, it’s me. Want to do some shopping at the market?’

‘Okay. Where’s Rajni?’

‘Didn’t have luck calling her. I’ll knock on her door,’ Jezmeen said.

They hung up. Jezmeen did a quick check in the mirror and ran her fingers through her hair. Brushing it wouldn’t help much against the gritty air once they got outside.

Rajni’s room was at the end of the hall on Jezmeen’s floor. She knocked and waited, then knocked again. Eventually, there was a voice at the door. ‘Yes?’

‘Raj, it’s Jezmeen. Open up.’

The door opened a crack through which Jezmeen could see one reddish eye. ‘I was napping,’ Rajni croaked.

‘Shirina and I are going shopping. You coming?’

‘Uh … no thanks. I’m going to stay in.’

‘Come on, Rajni. You have to see some of India while you’re here. You don’t have to just do what Mum stated in her letter.’ Jezmeen thought about it. ‘In fact, this is a great way to honour her memory. Mum loved a bargain and never understood why I bought clothes from High Street stores when they sold every type of knock-off at the flea markets she loved going to.’

It was a joke, but Rajni’s reaction didn’t change. ‘I think I’m coming down with something,’ she said.

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.’