In this novel about three sisters who are directed by their dying mother to undertake a pilgrimage together to find themselves and each other, Balli Kaur Jaswal reveals herself to be a master storyteller. From the moment the tale begins, we are drawn into the lives of the protagonists — the British-born Punjabi sisters and their soon-dead mother, whose last wish thrusts the three together. They converge in Delhi, and from then on starts a rollercoaster ride of those crazy, ludicrous incidents that an Indian from abroad often has to face in her home country. We laugh in recognition, and sometimes grimace at the coarseness of the blatant stare.
The women go from one adventure to another, each ending in a tantalising teaser about the complex backstory of one of the sisters. In each episode, we travel inwards, as Jaswal unfolds the emotional chaos of each sister.
Responsible Rajni discovers, just before she departs for Delhi, that her wayward son is in love with a woman closer to her age than his. Raunchy Jezmeen (with a ‘z’!), the reality-disaster-TV-show host, is floundering because her career is threatened when she is caught on camera in an incredible disaster of her own making. Sensitive Shirina, in a marriage that she has arranged for herself, because, in addition to giving her a charming husband, it holds out the safety of tradition, is finding out that the life she has tied herself to is all about control.
Promise of peace
Each sister has a terrible secret that she cannot share with the others, each sister presents a façade that she believes is important for maintaining the family dynamic. Each sister is burdened with the guilt of their mother’s death, which is rooted in past secrets. Will the journey create chinks in the walls that the three have built between themselves? Will it bring them closer? Will it help ground them in their heritage as their mother had hoped it would?
They stumble from Delhi, with its strange yet familiar landscapes, to Amritsar, with its promise of peace and absolution in the Golden Temple tank. It’s the height of summer and the temperature touches 45 degrees. Despite the physical discomfort, the sisters find themselves reliving their shared childhood memories. They are nostalgic but they also look back with the wisdom of hindsight.
There are questions to be asked: How did their mother recover after the sudden death of their father? How did they manage through the years of penury that followed? Their childhood joys, quarrels, tensions — it all trickles back into their psyche. The memories sometimes result in a gentler understanding of one another, but that does not always last as old frustrations return, and exasperation at the choices each has made rises to the surface. How will Rajni, Jezmeen and Shirina forgive and care for each other again? It will take a momentous denouement to do that and to reveal the many truths they have buried.
Injustices of patriarchy
The story is fast-paced, engaging and comic, yet addresses dark issues. Jaswal uses humour to highlight the patriarchal assumptions the sisters fight. She is adept at this — her previous novel, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows , while hilarious, had also underlined ugly social realities.
It is tempting to simplify Jaswal’s novels as those revealing the clash between the traditional and the modern, between East and West, but the issues she addresses run deeper. Jaswal hits out at the injustices of patriarchy and the fact that she does this through humour does not take away from the seriousness of the problem.
The happily-ever-after ending with its neat closure left me faintly dissatisfied. But this is just a tiny irritant in an otherwise superb novel. The Unlikely Adventures combines the seriousness of Greek drama with the frivolity of the contemporary soap opera. Its faith in the power of human relationship to build bridges makes it a heartwarming read.
The scientist, fiction-writer, editor and founder of Out of Print , is the author, most recently, of Polymorphism .
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters; Balli Kaur Jaswal, HarperCollins India, ₹499
Published - July 27, 2019 04:00 pm IST
