Chapter Eighteen

Twenty-eight years ago . . .

There was a drought in Punjab the summer before Dad died. The Punjabi community in West London was rife with speculation about weather patterns, the news having traveled all the way from India to England through networks of friends and relatives who had one foot in each country. Rajni’s parents agreed that the poor farming conditions back home were another reason to be grateful that they lived in England, although they waited anxiously for the overdue rains to revive the dying crops and heal the cracked soil. To Rajni, it didn’t always feel like they were in England. Sometimes it seemed that a huge tornado had uprooted her parents’ home from Punjab and plunked them down in London—the smoky scent of spices in the kitchen and the morning prayer broadcast from Amritsar serving as constant reminders of where home really was. The atmosphere in their house certainly felt more jubilant the day the rains returned to their ancestral land thousands of miles away.

Dad wanted to sell the land then. It had been stressful hearing about farmers driven to suicide because of their dwindling livelihoods. He brought it up with Mum at the dinner table, and it led to arguments. Although it wasn’t hers to give up, she was reluctant to let go of their place in Punjab. “If we don’t have that, we have nothing to go back to,” she said. It bothered Rajni that Mum saw India as a place to go back to. She remembered walking home from primary school once, and a group of girls had cornered her and pointed to a murky puddle of water they named Paki-land. That’s where you belong. Rajni hated the idea that they might be right. Where Rajni belonged was Britain. But sometimes she had trouble proving this to Mum, who had stern rules about her hemlines and her music, her preference for Western food, and her disdain toward Punjabi community gatherings where all the aunties and uncles compared their children and reminisced about India. It’s irrelevant now, Rajni always wanted to say when they became nostalgic about the past. They were in England and it was time to move on.

That October, Dad’s older brother, Thaya-ji, came to visit. From her parents’ conversations about the land in Punjab, Rajni was aware that Thaya-ji had made some poor business decisions and had to sell his portion of the land at a loss during the drought. He and his wife also had to move to Delhi to live with their elder son, who had just gotten married. It was shameful, having to depend on his son, and allowing Dad to pay for his ticket to England because he couldn’t afford it himself. The trip was long overdue, though, because Dad had not seen his brother in many years. Rajni noticed how excited Dad became as the day of Thaya-ji’s arrival approached. The long-distance phone calls over the years hadn’t allowed much room for telling Thaya-ji about his daily life, and he was keen for his older brother to see England. “We’ll take him to all the tourist sites,” Dad said. “But also, he will want to go to the temple, see how close-knit our community is here.”

Instead, from the moment he stepped off the plane, Thaya-ji made his disdain clear. “Our people come all the way here to clean toilets?” Thaya-ji asked, referring to a Sikh man he had seen mopping the toilet floor at Heathrow. Rajni could tell the comment stung Dad, who worked grueling shifts in a factory because his university qualifications from India hadn’t been transferable.

Thaya-ji spent most of the visit reiterating how unimpressive he found Dad’s life in Britain. “All of these things can also be found in Delhi,” he said when he accompanied them on a trip to the shops. “The weather is so damp and dreary—you enjoy shivering like this all the time?” he scoffed. Dad didn’t argue, out of respect for his older brother, even when Thaya-ji made comments about Mum’s cooking (“too bland”) and Rajni’s rusty Punjabi language skills (“she sounds like a gori”). Jezmeen and Shirina were just little girls then, and they weren’t held to the same standards.

One night, as Mum was clearing the table, Thaya-ji mentioned to Dad that Mum had spent a while chattering with a red-faced Englishman who came to their door. “You mean the man who checked our water meter?” Mum asked. “He had come back from a family holiday in Norfolk and I was just asking him how it was. It’s only polite small talk.”

“It’s just that you have daughters,” Thaya-ji said. He liked bringing this up as a mild warning. “You don’t want them learning to talk in such a familiar way to strange men, do you?”

Rajni noticed Mum seething afterward as they rinsed the dishes together, but if Dad noticed that Mum was upset, he didn’t say anything. It was probably better than agreeing with Thaya-ji, Rajni thought, although she wished he’d stood up for Mum. The next morning when the postman arrived just as Rajni was heading out the door for school, Mum said quietly in Punjabi, “No need to smile and say hello, all right?” Rajni pretended to be distracted by something in the distance as she walked past the postman. She reminded herself that Thaya-ji would only stay with them for another week, and then she hoped never to see him again.

But the next day, Thaya-ji found something else to criticize. Mum was finally learning how to drive, having put it off for years by taking buses and walking to the market. Her instructor was a man from the community who was recently divorced. Seeing Mum pull up to the driveway after her lesson with the man, Thaya-ji was not pleased. “It’s inappropriate,” he said. “It’s after dark. What will people say?”

“They will say that I’m learning to drive,” Mum said. Her voice was calm but Rajni could see a hint of uncertainty in her expression. Mum shot a look at Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina sitting at the dinner table. It’s just that you have daughters. Maybe if they were boys, Thaya-ji wouldn’t meddle so much.

Thaya-ji’s laugh was short and unpleasant. “You don’t have to turn everything into an argument. I was simply saying—”

“You’ve said enough,” Mum snapped. Thaya-ji was so stunned that he didn’t reply.

Rajni was filled with admiration for Mum for speaking up. It was about time. Although Dad looked a bit embarrassed, he simply shifted in his seat and didn’t say anything. That night, Rajni heard her parents arguing in hushed voices. Their words were indistinct, but at one point, Dad’s voice rose sharply and the conversation was over. In the morning, Mum was distracted and irritable. She threatened to take Jezmeen’s breakfast plate away if she didn’t finish eating on time. As Rajni swung her bag over her shoulder and left for school, Mum said, “You come straight home after school today—no hanging around in the shopping center with Nadia afterward.”

“But—” Rajni protested.

“Oh, you want to argue?” Mum challenged. “Come home right away.”

The rest of Thaya-ji’s visit was filled with tense smiles and stiff silences. Mum didn’t seem triumphant after talking back to her brother-in-law. Knowing that she had crossed a line, she was careful not to enter any more arguments with him or Dad, and she became stricter with her daughters. Rajni was told off most often—for rolling her eyes, for playing her music too loud, for doing anything that Thaya-ji might consider too English. The general sense of unease in the house was enough for little four-year-old Jezmeen to notice. “When’s he going back?” she whispered one night, when Rajni was putting on some glittery eye shadow for her. She had been begging to look just like Madonna on the cover of Rajni’s album.

At dinner the night before Thaya-ji was due to leave, Dad tried to defuse the tension with a joke. He had fallen in the shower that evening and hit his head—not really hard enough to be concerned, but his fingers kept returning to the spot, checking for swelling. “You really shouldn’t have pushed me,” he said to Mum with a grin. Mum, filling Shirina’s plate, looked up in surprise and then retorted, “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it.” Thaya-ji didn’t laugh. He gave Mum a hard look. Come on, lighten up, Rajni thought. It was the kind of joke that always passed between her parents, and she was relieved that things would get back to normal after Thaya-ji left.

Dad’s death was nobody’s fault. He couldn’t have known that the impact of the fall was more severe than it seemed, especially since he wasn’t dizzy or throwing up afterward. The slow bleeding in his brain only caught up to him four days later while he was clocking off from his factory shift. A supervisor found Dad slumped near his car but there was nothing anybody could do at that stage. The doctor made sure to explain what was called an acute subdural hematoma to Mum, who was already taking responsibility. “My fault,” she kept sobbing. “Now, Mrs. Shergill,” the doctor said firmly, “this was just an unfortunate thing that happened.” But misfortune, rather than the accident itself, was what Mum was blaming herself for. Rajni knew how Mum’s superstitious mind worked. It was checking all of her transgressions that invited the evil eye. She shouldn’t have celebrated so much when the rain returned in Punjab, tempting fate by saying aloud how lucky they were to live in Britain. She shouldn’t have argued with her brother-in-law. She certainly shouldn’t have made that disrespectful comment about pushing Dad.

After Dad’s ashes were flown to India and scattered by his brothers, Mum’s superstitious behavior went into overdrive. Rajni and her sisters were grieving too, but Mum’s concerns were wrapped up in rituals to protect them from suffering any more unexpected tragedies. The rules were the same as before but more strictly enforced, and attached to consequences by tenuous links the logic of which only Mum could see. Leaving the windows exposed invited evil spirits into their home, so Mum kept the curtains drawn at all times, and the house was shrouded in darkness. “I am just trying to protect you,” Mum insisted when she lined up the girls and circled their heads with fistfuls of dried chilis and birdseed to ward off bad luck. Prayers from the Golden Temple boomed from their speakers throughout the day now, drowning out the beats from Rajni’s radio.

Mum implemented more house rules too, as if taking on the roles of both parents meant she had to be doubly strict. She implemented curfews and constantly asked Rajni to consider what people would think about their family if they saw her chatting with boys on the bus, or trotting around in those skintight blue jeans. Mum explained that they had to be more careful about how they appeared now, because with Dad gone, a family of only females was more vulnerable to gossip. “God knows how I’ll get you all married off now.” Mum sighed. “People will say, ‘Those girls raised without a father? We don’t want our sons getting involved with such a family.’ ”

Rajni responded with rebellion. She hiked up her skirt as soon as she disappeared from Mum’s view, and she skipped classes and smoked cigarettes. On Saturday afternoons, she danced her frustrations away with her friend Nadia at the daylight discos for hours until her clothes were soaked in sweat. With pop music still ringing in her ears, she returned home before dark and made sure to mention just enough details about that afternoon’s study session at the library to keep Mum’s suspicions at bay.

It was little Shirina curiously rifling through Rajni’s things one day who found a pack of cigarettes. Not knowing exactly what they were, she carted her new find around the house until Mum spotted her. Rajni came home from school that afternoon to find her bed covered in a display of everything she had kept hidden—the short skirts and tube tops borrowed from Nadia’s older cousin, the cigarettes, a coaster she had nicked from the club, and photographs of scenes Mum would never allow: Rajni with a boy’s arm casually slung around her shoulder, Rajni in a low-cut top, pouting her painted lips for the camera. Those pictures were proof of another life. Rajni took some pride in them because they reminded her that she wasn’t what those mean girls said she was.

The trip to India afterward had two purposes. The first, Mum had already suggested a few weeks before uncovering Rajni’s double life. There had been problems communicating with Dad’s family over the sale of his land. Mum was entitled to the land Dad had owned, but every time she called Dad’s relatives, it seemed they were occupied with something else, or the person Mum wanted to speak to wasn’t there. Soon, whatever savings Dad left behind would not cover the costs of running a household. The sale of Dad’s land in Punjab would be helpful. If Dad’s family were avoiding her, she needed to go to India in person to sort things out. The trip would also be a good opportunity for Rajni to reconnect with her culture. Buying another ticket at the last minute was an additional expense but worth every penny, by Mum’s calculations. The price of letting her daughter spend the whole summer going wild in Britain was much steeper.

They started off in Mum’s brother’s house in Punjab, where the days were filled with rounds of visits over samosas and steaming cups of tea. Rajni spent every afternoon in the sitting room of some cousin or uncle she’d never heard of, politely nodding to questions and squirming under their curious gazes. The female cousins had unplucked eyebrows and wore their hair in thick plaits. Rajni prided herself in taking better care of her appearance. Whenever she was allowed to use the house phone, she called her friend Nadia, who was stuck on a similar visit in Delhi. They jokingly made a plan to break Rajni out of this house. “We could say you got kidnapped. British citizen abducted abroad!” Nadia giggled.

Meanwhile, Mum was making little progress wading through the bureaucratic nightmare of inheriting her husband’s land. Dad’s relatives rarely answered calls. They had never been kind to her anyway—after she had three daughters, they had even less reason to involve her in family decisions. When Mum did manage to get in touch with Dad’s relatives, they were aloof and rude to her. Rajni witnessed her throwing the phone down in anger several times after yet another conversation which brought her no closer to getting what was rightfully hers.

Mum’s presence in India wasn’t helping her at all. She started looking into getting lawyers involved, but everything had to be done through family-member networks there, and her brother was reluctant to let people know that there was a family conflict brewing. “It’s starting to get embarrassing,” Rajni overheard her uncle saying to Mum. “You’re looking desperate, and hard-up.” It wasn’t the image that they portrayed to their neighbors, of their sister who was doing well in England.

Image had become more important to Mum than ever. Again, she began to fret about what people would say about her, and whether she was ruining her chances at getting her daughters married one day if word traveled from Punjab to London that she had returned to India to scrabble for loose change after her husband died (the land was worth more than that, but by the time the rumors reached London, Mum would be portrayed as a scheming, calculative widow).

The stress took a toll on Mum and she grew impatient with Rajni, who wore her foreignness in Punjab like a badge of honor. Rajni’s eyes glazed over when her cousins spoke rapidly in Punjabi. She made a face when her aunties joked that she’d be ready for marriage in a few years. “In England, people get educated before getting married,” she replied pointedly, knowing she was being condescending. They took a trip to Amritsar and the Wagah Border to watch the changing-of-the-guards ceremony one day, and all Rajni could do was sulk and refuse to participate.

“Do you think you’re too good for all of this?” Mum asked that night, as they got ready for bed. “Is this what I raised you in England for, so you could come to India and look down on everyone?” Moonlight spilled through the window and gave her face a sickly, bluish tint. At the border, Mum had joined the dancing and looked happier than Rajni had seen her in a long time. Rajni blinked back tears but made sure Mum didn’t see her getting upset. Of course she felt guilty for being difficult but she just wanted to be back in London. The whole stupid trip was Mum’s idea anyway—hadn’t this punishment gone on long enough? She was dying to get back to a nightclub again, to dance away her pain. Instead, they still had one more visit to get through, and Rajni was dreading it.

The visit to Delhi on the way back to London was more about Thaya-ji’s family saving face than anything else. Despite the unpleasantness of his stay in London, they had to reciprocate Mum’s hospitality by hosting them for a few days. Mum saw it as her last opportunity to claim Dad’s land. Thaya-ji of all people would understand how devastating the loss would be, having had to sell his portion cheaply to pay off debts. “We might have to offer him some of our land money to persuade him to help us,” Mum said to Rajni as they settled into their seats on the train out of Punjab. “But it’s worth a try.”

Thaya-ji and his wife were polite at first, but it quickly became clear that the tension from his visit had not dissolved—Rajni noticed them frequently exchanging glances and making smug comments about Mum’s return to India. The payback was obvious one night when Thaya-ji started talking about his time in London. “It’s funny, isn’t it,” he said to his wife, within earshot of Mum and Rajni. “I arrived in England and the first thing I saw was one of our own men holding a mop and bucket. It made me think about all the success these people brag about from miles away, when the reality is quite different.”

“Don’t say anything,” Mum warned Rajni.

The atmosphere in the flat was suffocating. Rajni hated being nice to an uncle who treated them so poorly but Mum warned her not to talk back to him—all he wanted was for them to be remorseful, and then he’d probably help them out. Mum recalled a more generous time, when Thaya-ji supported Dad’s education, and even sold some of his property to help Dad get started out in England. “It’s his duty to help,” Mum said. “That’s why he seemed so arrogant during that visit—he was uncomfortable taking any charity from his younger brother.”

Rajni thought Mum was being naive, but Mum insisted that Thaya-ji wouldn’t let his younger brother’s family languish. It wouldn’t be the honorable thing to do, and one thing Thaya-ji repeatedly made clear was the importance of honor.

They had three days in Delhi. Rajni found a chance to talk to Nadia again one afternoon, and found out that Delhi had an exciting nightlife, none of which she would have any exposure to if she spent the entire trip with her relatives. She lamented to Nadia that she was going to return to England having spent her whole summer indoors, being a dutiful Indian daughter. “All bloody day, I’m just sitting here with my mouth shut, bored to tears,” Rajni said. “At least you’ve got your cousin to hang out with.” Nadia’s cousin, a first-year fashion design college student, had taken her shopping in Khan Market and brought her to a store in Karol Bagh that had the most genuine-looking knockoff handbags.

“Just another couple of days and you’ll be back in London,” Nadia said. “You have a sweet-sixteenth party to look forward to at the end of August, don’t think I haven’t forgotten!”

“I don’t think I can take another minute of this,” Rajni said. She paused as a shadow passed in the hallway—one of the adults walking by. A moment passed, and then Mum called out to Rajni from the kitchen. “Come and help make the rotis, Rajni. Rajni? Where are you? Are you on the phone? Calls aren’t free, you know.”

“Did you hear that?” Rajni asked Nadia between gritted teeth. “I have to go, but seriously. Save me.”

“Come out and meet me tonight,” Nadia said. “We’ll celebrate your birthday a little early.” She gave Rajni some directions, and assured her that she would get her home before anybody noticed she was gone. After hanging up, Rajni kept the directions in mind, but she knew it was too risky to try to sneak out of the apartment. Only a few more days, she reminded herself as she headed to the kitchen to help Mum.

“Blend the dough,” Mum instructed, handing Rajni a bowl of flour. “Don’t put too much water in there—it was too sticky last time. Hai, what are you doing? Didn’t I just say not too much water? What kind of daughter-in-law will you make, not even knowing how to cook proper rotis?”

The kind of daughter-in-law who would tell her husband to make his own dinner if he’s going to criticize, Rajni thought, but she didn’t say anything. Nadia’s offer to take her out that night became more tempting. A plan began to form in Rajni’s mind—her relatives usually went to sleep early and from sharing a room with Mum on this trip, Rajni knew that she was a deep sleeper. The blare of traffic outside the window didn’t stir her, and it would take a lot for her to wake up in the middle of the night and notice Rajni was gone.

Dinner seemed to drag on that night. There was an agonizing wait for everybody to go to bed, but Rajni knew that once they were asleep, she had to move quickly. Under her pillow, she had hidden a tank top and the pair of tight jeans that Mum forbade her to wear here unless she wore a loose and long kurti top over them. She grabbed these clothes and her small makeup pouch, and slipped to the bathroom to change. Before tiptoeing out of the house, she checked Nadia’s directions again. It looked like it would be a quick walk to the main road, and then Rajni would be able to find her way from there.

Just stepping out into the night air made Rajni feel free. The lane was crowded with discarded styrofoam cases from a nearby warehouse and shadows seemed to swallow up the path, but Rajni was carried along by the thrill of her escapade. Finally, she was doing things on her own terms. She dodged a motorcycle as it came hurtling down the street with no warning. The driver looked at her suspiciously and called out something as he passed. Rajni hurried along toward the lights of the main road in the distance. Adrenaline fizzed through her bloodstream. She couldn’t wait to see Nadia. They’ve been keeping me like a bloody prisoner, she’d shriek when they reunited.

As Rajni approached the end of the lane, she realized that the main road was farther away than she thought. A crumbling brick wall with shards of broken glass glued to the top blocked her from going any farther. Beyond it was another neighborhood of low-slung apartment buildings, lined crookedly like old teeth. Lights shone between the buildings but now Rajni wasn’t sure if they were coming from the main road at all. She had to hurry—Nadia was probably wondering where she was.

Rajni made a turn, and then another turn, and when it seemed like she was getting somewhere, she found herself heading toward a dead end again. The neighborhood seemed walled in by darkness, and there were spaces she was afraid to enter. At this time of the night, only men were out. Rajni’s presence was noticeable—conversations stopped as she hurried past, keeping her head down. The catcalling was loud and ugly. Some men followed her, chuckling as she picked up her pace. Stray dogs stretched their limbs lazily and stared at Rajni with indifference as she searched for a way back home.

Somehow, Rajni finally emerged from the neighborhood and onto the main road, but Nadia wasn’t anywhere in sight. It had been nearly an hour since their set meeting time and they had agreed that if Rajni was late, it meant that she’d been caught. Now the chance of getting caught didn’t seem nearly as dangerous. At least she’d be indoors.

Instinct told Rajni that the convenience stores—those that were still open at this hour—weren’t safe places to enter or ask for help. She trained her eyes on the way ahead to avoid the grins that gleamed from men’s faces. She wished she couldn’t hear the things they were saying. How much? What will you do for me? The panic was making her knees shake but she kept walking, almost breaking into a run when she spotted the police station.

It was early morning when Rajni arrived back at the apartment with two officers at her side. She had had to wait in the station for another hour and answer questions even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. The officer who questioned her took pleasure in giving her a hard time. His eyes roamed across her bare arms and lingered at the hint of cleavage that her tank top exposed. Her makeup was smudged and she had her arms crossed over her chest when she walked into the door of the flat, aware of how she looked and what everybody thought. Her relatives stood like chess pieces, waiting for somebody to let them move. Mum’s pale, stricken face at that moment never left her memory. She pulled Rajni by the elbow into the bedroom and began shouting at her. “What the hell were you thinking?” she cried. “Going out like that. You shouldn’t have bothered coming back!”

Those were the words that hurt most. Mum had no idea how frightening the experience had been for Rajni. She didn’t think she was ever going to make it back to the apartment. Tears burned her eyes as Mum continued to berate her. Everything Rajni did was wrong, disappointing, shameful. What kind of example was she setting for her little sisters? What would her father say if he knew what she had become? The mention of Dad struck a nerve, and she responded before she really understood what she was saying.

“Oh, and you’re such an upstanding person?” Rajni cried. “You probably pushed Dad and killed him because you were sleeping with that driving instructor.”

The room froze. Rajni’s uncle and auntie had been shadows in her periphery during this argument, but now she was very aware of their presence. She could practically hear the questions forming in their minds after hearing her accusation. It wasn’t true. Rajni knew it, and Mum knew that she knew it. But once the words flew out of her mouth, they took on a meaning that would haunt Rajni for years to come.

For Thaya-ji, it was all the proof they needed that Mum wasn’t worthy of the land. “I wanted to help, but if this is the truth, then I cannot,” he said with a dramatic sigh. His sad reluctance was exaggerated—Rajni could see his eyes shining with excitement at the excuse to get Mum off their backs. This had been her last chance—once they returned to London, Thaya-ji would see the lawyers and make the calls to claim the land for himself. With Mum’s reputation in tatters, nobody would dispute him.

By the time the word spread to Dad’s and Mum’s families, the story took on mythic proportions. In their imaginations, Rajni had sneaked out with a boy, several boys, there was alcohol on her breath, she stumbled into the house, she was incoherent, she had had to do a few favors for those police officers before they would bring her home. Mum’s chances of getting the land were ruined.