Singing their own song

Singing their own song

Sita doesn’t have an easy relation with her daughters. Having been supplanted from her soil, the mother tries to impose the life that she left behind, on her daughters, who are aged 16, 5 and 3. Now, much older, Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina set off to India, to fulfill Sita’s last wishes — a pilgrimage of sorts, connecting the British girls with their Sikh roots. 

What follows them around in India is the maddening cacophony, a riot of colours, their stash of secrets, patriarchy and misogyny. Each girl has experienced the latter aspects in some form or the other and that builds up to the mesh of the plot. Don’t get us wrong, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is about sisterhood. But the sisterhood doesn’t come easy because of their equation with each other. 

The oldest — Rajni — is a teacher, prim and proper and eager to do her mother’s bidding. She is caught in the clash between her mother’s ideals, her beliefs and her son Anil’s rather liberal views on relationships. Jezmeen is the brash, rebellious middle sister, trying her luck as a South Asian face in British television and cinema. She gives the impression of someone who is flighty and takes pleasure in driving her older sister round the bend. But all Jezmeen wants is to be rooted. 

Shirina is the peacemaker, always running away from fights and arguments that her older sisters seem to indulge in ever so often. She wants a perfect, non-argumentative family and gets one. Much later Shirina realises that her new family is ‘peaceful’ because they expect compliance from their bahu. 

All the three embark on the trip hoping that they can escape their troubles. But they didn’t factor in their dead mother’s commands or rather foresight. In fact, no Indian child, can have an upperhand when it comes to negotiating with the parents. They have foresight and they willy-nilly extract the advantage from their kids. So does Sita. She wants her daughters to bond and they bond, rather unwillingly at first. The arguments, bitching, gossiping between the three women is very real. 

Balli Kaur Jaswal has also painted a very accurate picture of the people who are first time visitors to their des — worried what the local food would do to their tummies, distrust for the cab drivers, distaste for the lack of sanitation and so on. The part that comes out stronger in the book is the one of Sita. She has dealt with a lot more resentment and agony than her daughters, in the country of her birth and her new home. It’s from her that the Shergill girls get their courage. A toast to the Shergill family and their wicked, funny and bit**y ways!

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