The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Author:Balli Kaur Jaswal
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062645166
Publisher: HarperCollins

Rajni led the way, barefoot, along the edges of the water. A long strip of carpet ran along the path to the temple. If she stepped off the carpet, her feet would make contact with the heat-soaked tiles. Ahead of her there were two children playing, nudging each other off the carpet as they tried to maintain their balance. From their play, Rajni understood that the marble floor took on the heat of lava in their imaginations. They stepped on and off, giggling and squealing. She felt an ache in her chest, thinking of Anil, and how much she had wanted him to have a sibling. How strangely incomplete her family always felt, as if there was a ghostly presence of something that never existed. Was that why he was so eager to start a family of his own? Had he always been lonely? She couldn’t ask him those questions now. This morning, she trawled through her social media pages and found that they had been scrubbed clean of any traces of Anil. He had deleted and blocked her. It was strange how visceral and effective the pain of an online snub could be. Any small amount of guilt or doubt that Rajni felt over hiring that private investigator was gone now.

They continued their slow walk toward the temple, passing the men’s bathing area of the sarovar. A screen blocked off the view but when the men emerged from the pool and stood up to put their clothes back on, their heads and feet were visible behind the screen. There was an air of celebration to the whole ritual—they patted each other on the back and called out.

“We’re not going in there, are we?” Jezmeen asked.

“There’s a separate bathing area for women,” Rajni said. “I think it’s over there.” She pointed at a bathhouse ahead under the shade of a tree with outstretched branches, where women were lining up with their belongings neatly tucked under their arms. Another stream of women exited the bathhouse, their actions not quite as congratulatory as the men’s. Rajni wondered if this was because their bath was private whereas the men—save for the screen—were out in the open. Their purification was on display for the whole world to see.

As they got closer to the temple, the line of people thickened and the spaces became narrower. From what Rajni could see, there were two or three rows for lining up. One line seemed to move much faster than the others but it was the slow line that most people wanted to be in. “I don’t get what’s going on,” she muttered.

“Feels like we’re at a nightclub,” Jezmeen said.

A gray-haired woman in front of them turned around and explained: “This line is for tourists. The people who just want to come inside, see the temple, and go. You move right through. The other line is for devotees to sit down. It takes longer to get through.”

“So . . . the express line, then?” Jezmeen asked. “We don’t have to sit in there, do we? We just want to pay respects.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.