Inheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Author:Balli Kaur Jaswal [Jaswal, Balli Kaur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: contemporary
ISBN: 9781742705477
Goodreads: 17338112
Publisher: Sleepers Publishing
Published: 2013-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Do you want to fight for your rights?

Are you tired of being told that

your opinions don’t matter?

NO MORE NANNY STATE

Below those headlines were details of the meeting of a collective. Join Us For An Open Discussion, encouraged the welcoming print. Gurdev scrunched the flier into a ball and tore through the room, looking for others. He found them in the pockets of pants, in a satchel, in drawers. He collected all of them and bolted from the flat without saying goodbye.

Father

Shame had a blinding effect on Harbeer. Leaving the flat one morning, he opened the main door to discover Amrit sleeping near the pot plants, a set of house keys dangling from her pocket. He stepped around her like a thief, and hurried away as she began to stir. Shame fuelled his walk to the coffee shop.

The next day, the newspaper ran an article about a collision that had occurred on the corner of their street at 8.30 a.m., between a bread truck and a motorcycle. Witnesses to the scene were encouraged to call the listed number with any information. Harbeer recognised the location but he could not recall noticing an accident scene. Surely police officers and flashing lights would have captured his attention. He searched his mind, but he realised that his rage had transported him to some pitch-black road, where all of his worst thoughts nested.

When empty, the temple was Harbeer’s daily refuge from the thoughts that crowded his brain. It was the only place he ventured to, besides the shops. Every day at the crack of dawn, the chill of morning bristling the hairs on his arms, he took the bus and then walked into the narrow lanes. How different the world was when the day was just beginning. School children slumped like sacks of rice on the low plastic bus stop seats. The sky displayed an ever-changing palette of pink, blue, orange, and sometimes fiercely red, streaks. He could not adjust his ears to this absence of noise. Taxis and buses sailed along the roads at intervals instead of as one gushing torrent. The typical chatter of children was replaced with a collective mournful sigh, the sound his granddaughters emitted when told they had to finish all their vegetables.

The temple was vacant on weekday mornings, save for a few elderly retirees and the granthi, whose warbling voice filtered out of the gates and broke like dew among the morning murmurs. Harbeer always took time washing his hands after removing his shoes. It disgusted him to see people walking shamelessly into the temple without cleaning their hands first. After touching the dirt of the earth, how could they enter a place of worship and press their palms to the carpet as they bowed before their Holy Book? And how could they use those filthy fingers to offer their coins to the temple before rising and finding a spot on the carpet to sit? Witnessing such atrocities brought to mind a list of grievances. The strip of red

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