The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters. Balli Kaur Jaswal

life – all this working and suffering and trying to take care of myself for no bloody reason. Please enjoy your health while you have it because once your body betrays you, no comforts in the world will make up for your loss.

      No, she couldn’t leave them with that. It was too honest. If these were her last words, they’d never forgive her. She folded the sheet and set it on her side table, weighing it down with the pen, and then she closed her eyes. How did she want to be remembered? She had been a wife, a mother, a widow and a grandmother. Sikh funerals didn’t include eulogies, so her daughters would be spared the task of scraping together a list of her meagre achievements. On some days, she thought she knew which of her daughters would remember her least kindly and on better days, she assured herself that all of them would at least agree that she had tried her very best.

      Sita pressed the button to call for the nurse again. It took a while this time, but eventually the rail-thin girl with the tattoos and half her head shaved arrived. She was not as friendly as the Jamaican nurse who sometimes squeezed Sita’s hand and said, ‘You rest now,’ but she smiled when Sita asked her: ‘How old are you?’

      ‘I’m twenty-seven,’ she replied. There were zig-zag patterns shaved into the sides of the girl’s scalp. Sita wondered what man found this sort of thing attractive.

      ‘Have you ever been to India?’ she asked.

      ‘No,’ the nurse said, a bit regretfully, which pleased Sita.

      ‘If your mother asked you to do something for her, no matter what it was, would you do it?’ she asked.

      The nurse slid Sita’s table down the bed so she could tug at the edge of the blanket, which was bunched up by her feet. Her fingers grazed the knuckles of Sita’s toes. ‘Of course I would,’ she said. ‘Now, is there something you need, because—’

      ‘What’s your religion?’ Sita asked.

      Her question was met with narrowed eyes. ‘I do believe that’s a very personal question to ask.’

      Sita frowned. There was a reason she liked the Jamaican nurse better. She wore a thin gold cross that hung just beneath the V-neck of her scrubs. ‘Ho, Lord,’ she wheezed quietly, stretching her back at the end of a long shift.

      ‘Can you hand me my pen and paper, please?’ Sita asked. As the girl reached into the drawer next to the bed, Sita’s heart leapt into her throat. Not there!

      ‘It’s right there, on the table,’ Sita snapped, pointing at the table, now out of her reach. Although the nurse was unlikely to pluck Sita’s jewellery pouch from where it was nestled between a prayer book and her mobile phone charger, Sita had lived long enough to know that you could never be too careful. The girl moved the table back and then left, probably to grumble and tell the other nurses that they were right, old Mrs Shergill needed to cark it already. Last week, Rajni had stormed into the nurses’ station and told them off for leaving Sita shivering during a particularly agonizing episode. ‘I don’t care if she’s already got a blanket, get her another one,’ Rajni nearly shouted, making Sita want to weep with gratitude and also chastise her daughter for making a scene.

      The pain was inching into her body now, and she could sense that it was going to be a bad day. Her daughters would visit this afternoon – hopefully all three of them, since Rajni had called Shirina and informed her to fly over at once when it appeared that Sita’s remaining days were down to single digits. She had to write this letter before the strength leached out of her.

       To Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina:

       If you remember correctly, when I was first diagnosed with cancer, I wanted to go to India to do a pilgrimage to honour the principles of our great Gurus. You and the doctors convinced me that this was a bad idea because my health was already so fragile, but I think it would have enriched my spirit, if not my physical condition.

       I am attaching a list of the places that I would like you to visit on my behalf, after I am gone. They are in Delhi, Amritsar and beyond. The whole journey will take a week. You should go together and do all the tasks as instructed: seva, to serve others and preserve your humility; a ritual sarovar bath, for cleansing and protecting your soul from ailments; and a trek to the high peaks of spirituality, to feel appreciation for that body which carries you in this life. I would also like my ashes to be scattered in India.

       There are also some places I’d like you to visit because I won’t have the chance to do so. Simple pleasures, like watching the sunrise at India Gate, and sharing a humble dinner together. I will outline the itinerary in more detail on the next page. Please do this for me. It will be a way of completing my journey in this world and continuing yours.

       Love,

       Your mother, Sita Kaur Shergill.

      Sita’s vision began to blur as she read over the letter. There it was, the searing sensation in her bones. She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched the sides of her mattress. There was only so much morphine the nurses could administer in a day and no legal dose seemed to be enough to wash it all away. ‘We’re here, Mum, we’re here,’ she imagined her daughters saying, just like the blonde woman, as she presented the letter to them. Their faces would be awash with tears and they would take each other’s hands, united for once.

      As the wave of pain subsided, Sita picked up her pen again and turned over the sheet to work on the itinerary. Agony was quickly replaced by nostalgia – Sita’s memories of India were stronger than ever. An end-of-life counsellor named Russ who visited last week said that it was common to remember the past vividly as death approached. ‘Think of it as a transition,’ Russ had said. ‘You are finishing one stage and entering another.’ Recalling those words, Sita considered her daughters’ journey to India. She would insist that they do this – no excuses, no backing out. It was a comfort to know that while they returned to her origins, she would be busy entering the afterlife. Who knew how long it would take to adjust to her new surroundings there, make friends, find out how the coffee machine worked? What if Devinder had also ended up in this new place? She had decades of catching up to do with her late husband, after she’d finished telling him off for leaving so suddenly.

      Thoughts and memories of those early years of marriage and having children flooded Sita’s mind, reducing all remaining traces of pain to a dull ache that settled in her chest. Those were chaotic days – learning to be a wife and a mother, running a household and adjusting to life in a new country. When she finally got the hang of it all, her husband died. There was only a small fraction of Sita’s lifespan when her family was whole. She scribbled more items onto the itinerary. Her last trip to India had been nearly thirty years ago. In his explanation of the stages of grief, Russ had said that some people experienced an intense desire to turn back time. Although Sita prided herself on being too pragmatic for such wishes, she also hoped that her daughters found India just as she had left it.

      There was something else Sita wanted to tell her daughters. It was a confession of sorts, for something she made up her mind to do after Russ left her bedside. She would have to find a suitable moment to tell them. It was not appropriate to write it down; she’d have to lower her voice and prompt her daughters to gather closer. They’d dismiss her at first, of course. ‘Mum, don’t be silly,’ Rajni or Shirina would say. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Jezmeen would retort, because to Jezmeen, nothing was real, not even on a woman’s deathbed. Then they’d begin to protest, telling her she didn’t know what she was saying. That was by far the most frustrating thing about being terminally ill – everybody thought she was thinking through a haze of fear, a desperate need to cling to life. But death was the most certain thing in the world. To prove to her daughters that she was indeed being serious, she’d tell them to open the drawer and take out the jewellery pouch. Have a look inside. You see? Now, please don’t argue with your mother.

       Chapter One

       I would prefer that you take this journey during a cooler time of the year,