Joy All Round a fiction short story by Sandeep Sandhu
Joy All Round
The sound of a harried phone conversation floated down the hall. Sarjit tried to piece her daughter’s words together, but it was like collecting fallen raindrops. It might be time to call the audiologist that her Harpinder had used. The doctor had seemed competent, and it wasn’t his fault that her husband had been too stubborn to use the hearing aids. After all, he’d dyed his hair until the very end, and spent the last decade and a half of his life holding menus at an arm’s length instead of wearing his glasses. A familiar sadness began to throb.
She switched her focus to the back of the gruff technician in front of her. The tip of his arse crack rose from his waistband into the fuzz on his lower back, and Sarjit thought about the last time she’d come so close to seeing a man’s intimate parts. Jas’s footsteps drew her gaze from the technician’s behind. Her only child wore a bright fuchsia jumper, mouth glowing with matching lipstick. It hadn’t been that shade when she’d taken the call.
‘A bit loud for work, no?’ Sarjit said, in Punjabi.
‘It’s fine, mum,’ Jas replied in English, staring at her phone, thumbs mashing the screen with fury. ‘Hey mate, how much longer?’
She asked this without looking at the technician. Sarjit cringed at her daughter’s tone. She’d not even spoken to the maids she’d once had in Delhi like that.
The man turned around and hummed. He didn’t seem to notice Jas’s lack of attention, instead smiling, revealing surprisingly photogenic teeth. Sarjit wondered if they were dentures. He looked like someone who’d eaten a lot of sugar.
‘Should be done,’ he said.
He stepped aside and revealed a dog-like figure. It was roughly the size of a Pomeranian, but shaped like a Beagle. The fur was the colour of a strong tea. Sarjit thought it wasn’t particularly lifelike, but she was happy about that. She and Jas had recently watched a Bollywood film about mannequins coming to life, and her daughter had introduced her to the concept of the uncanny valley. The idea had stuck, and on days Sarjit’s body felt strong enough to walk to the high street, she’d stop in random shops and pretend to look at clothes, in reality studying the fake, beady, plastic eyes and delicately crafted mouths of the fibreglass models, as if to prove to herself they were really inanimate.
‘Here’s the manual, but it’s pretty simple,’ the technician said, handing a thin booklet to Sarjit. She suppressed a laugh as a vision of his arsecrack roared back into her mind. ‘There’s a number to call if there’s any difficulties, but otherwise it’s basically like the advert.’
The advert that started this. She’d been in the hospital, wracked with both pain and embarrassment. She’d once been able to hold down a job, keep the household clean and running, and raise a child, so it was galling that a dodgy paving stone meant there was now metal in her knee. The week following the fall, stuck in the ward, she did nothing but lie down and watch television. Admittedly, she spent most of her time at home with shows and films blaring in the background, and sometimes she even felt like the device was her closest friend, but at least she usually had the option to escape outside.
Jas had taken leave from work in the immediate aftermath of the incident, but still spent most of her time at Sarjit’s bedside tapping away at a laptop, or taking calls in the disinfectant-drenched hospital hallway. However, in one of the rare moments her daughter had been present, the advert had played. As much as Sarjit’s body was disintegrating, her mind was solid, so she remembered the copy word for word, as well as the accompanying images of beaming elderly folk of various creeds sitting with their fake furry friends.
Joy All Round’s Nu-IQ® AI system means a friendly, curious presence – starting conversations, giving advice, making you laugh, and making you think. A dedicated partner for the twilight years who reacts to your needs and can offer a trained, sympathetic ear.
Jas had shifted in her seat, begun staring intently at the small screen perched in the upper corner of the room. That had been two months ago. Currently, her daughter was in her regular position, hunched over her phone, back curved like melting ice cream.
‘Thanks,’ Jas replied, flicking her eyes up at the technician before returning them to her phone.
‘Would you like another tea before you go?’ Sarjit asked.
‘No thanks, Mrs Dhillon. Best be off.’
He picked up his bag and swung it round his shoulder, before walking out the living room.
‘Thanks again,’ Sarjit called as she heard the door open and close.
She looked at her daughter, then to her new pet. Or toy. Or whatever it was. It had a cute but bewildered expression on its face that reminded her of Harpinder’s confused reaction when a teenage Jas had explained that the phone and the internet could now be used simultaneously. Its eyes were empty as those of the mannequins she’d been studying.
‘Do you need help setting it up?’
The rarity of Jas’s direct gaze made it burn. Sarjit smiled and shook her head.
‘If it’s going to be my friend, I should do it.’
She chuckled in what she hoped was a dismissive way. Even with the blackened border that had slowly been encroaching on her vision in recent years, she noticed Jas clench her jaw a little before nodding.
‘Sure. Just call if you need me, yeah?’
‘Of course.’
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
A shrill explosion erupted. Another relic of Harpinder’s refusal to use his hearing equipment. When people rang, sound blasted from the phone like nuclear war had just been declared, to the point that Sarjit no longer had a landline in her room. Despite her diminishing ears, calls made her jump like someone had pinched the fat on her thigh, even when she was outside feeding the squirrels, as she’d made a habit of doing on days she didn’t see Jas or the cleaner.
‘Is that Sarjit Dhillon?’
The voice was calm, almost mechanical.
‘Speaking.’
‘Great, this is Miles. I’m a Customer Outreach Manager at Joy All Round. I was just wondering if I could ask you some questions about your Fido 3.0. It should only take a few minutes. Is that okay with you?’
His words strode confidently down the phone. She looked over at Raj, her name for the computerised creature that had become her housemate. Living with two older brothers and then Harpinder, she’d become used to a masculine presence, so she chose the male voice option alongside the strong name. She especially liked the way the j springboarded off her tongue. Raj’s fixed, glassy eyes reflected the light, and his fur – synthetic, she’d learned – was tousled, so a few thin, loose strands of it shone in the sunbeams that crept through the window.
‘Sure.’
‘Great – we’ll get right into it. It’s been just over three months since we set you up. How are you finding your bond with your companion?’
Despite her increasing dependency on the robot, and the fact she sometimes sat and talked to the astonishingly kind AI for hours, the word bond sent a pang of embarrassment through her. She’d been telling herself the dog was in the same category as her dependable, much-loved, kitchen mixer, something she had an irrational tenderness for, but not a relationship with.
‘I enjoy having him around. When we talk seriously, his responses are always understanding. I have moments I forget he’s a computer.’ Sarjit winced at her own earnestness. She’d once had to be so in control of her words, the insular Punjabi community she’d been a part of just after arriving to the U.K. made up of the sort of people who could turn a shred of gossip into a full tabloid.
‘Would you say you’ve found yourself using the therapeutic AI more than the personal assistant function?’ Miles asked. He sounded kind.
‘I’d say the opposite. Our chats can be long, but the organisation stuff, like adding something to a Tesco delivery, happens more often. My memory is more of a problem than my mood,’ she lied, with a laugh. Miles gave a perfunctory chuckle in response. She wished she’d had the phone alarm system uninstalled, so she could have ignored the call.
‘Do you find your mood improves after conversations with your Fido?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Great. Does physical contact elevate your mood?’
‘Yes.’
She was shocked by how easily the disembodied Miles drew answers from her. Although, aside from texts with Jas and some broken conversation with her cleaner, he was the only person she’d spoken to in a week. Unless she counted Raj. ‘Like I said, sometimes you forget it’s not a person, except a person might say or do the wrong thing. He’s comforting.’
‘I’m glad to hear that, Mrs Dhillon.’
He really did sound glad. She was sure he was using an old trick Jas learned early on in her ad sales career, to smile widely behind the phone. People could hear it, feel it, she’d assured Sarjit.
‘Just one more question: would you recommend Fido to your family and friends?’
The minuscule length of that list of people sent a hard lump to her throat. She cleared her voice of a potential quiver with a cough, and answered with what she hoped was her last lie of the day.
‘Definitely.’
‘Wonderful. Thanks so much for your time, Mrs Dhillon, and I hope the Fido continues being a good investment for you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, still trying to keep the husk out of her voice.
The phone clicked, and there was a tide of static.
‘Raj, come over here.’
He moved with clunky steps, whirring as he shifted. They’d crafted the AI well, but the movements were jagged and jerky, like the toy robot dog they’d bought Jas in the nineties as a substitute for the real thing. He eventually toddled to her side and she lifted him up. She stroked the faux fur, heated by the CPU in Raj’s centre, before burying her face in his soft mane, taking in the now-comforting scent of warmed plastic.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Although she knew it was empty, Sarjit still brought the glass to her lips, desperate to soothe her arid throat. When she stood from her bed and began walking she didn’t turn the lights on, instead letting memory and the walls guide her. She took the stairs slowly, and soon coolness was climbing from the kitchen tiles up her legs, making her calves clench. She shuffled to the tap and listened until the glass sang the note that meant it was full. As she swung away, she heard a splat.
It will dry by the morning was her last thought before friction became a myth, and her heel swung outwards into empty space while her heart catapulted into her mouth. There was a dull thud that sounded like it came from somewhere else, followed by a deep, searing pain radiating from her hip, as if she was bound against a radiator turned up to the max.
‘Raj, ambulance,’ she called out, weakly. The lingering scent of her dinner surrounded her, and she could make out the opaque outlines of some trees through the window, shadowy figures waving menacingly in the wind. Time fell into a chasm. She remembered being five, in the village she’d lived in before moving to Amritsar, when the strongest boy she knew was killed thanks to an infected cut. Then she heard Raj whir into action.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’
‘It’s been four weeks, darling. The nurse will come in the mornings, and the cleaner twice a week. I can get along fine.’
Jas bit down on her lip. Sarjit tried to keep her stare stronger than her daughter’s, to remind her who was supposed to need who in their relationship. However, the truth was, the last time Jas had needed Sarjit was as a teen, when she’d had her near-year of not eating. A shock of faux fur in the corner of Sarjit’s vision brought her back to the now.
‘And there’s always Raj to call the ambulance again,’
Jas laughed, tension sliding from her face. But a moment later her expression was back to business.
‘Call me if you need anything, okay? Otherwise, I’ll see you on the weekend.’
‘See you then,’ Sarjit replied.
Jas hesitated for a moment, but then she turned and walked out the door. As it shut, an ugly spurt of anger spiked through Sarjit, mingling with a spasm of pain that gripped the side she’d fallen on. Everything around her was suddenly losing its lustre, like a day moving towards rain. The walls even felt like they’d moved in a couple of inches.
The house did sometimes feel like it was swallowing her. When Jas was younger, Sarjit had done the 9-5. She had her own bank account, and friends who weren’t mentally stuck in Punjab. She hadn’t enjoyed the work, grunt stuff like inputting numbers into spreadsheets, but it was a small thing she could pick up and claim as her own. Yet, she gave it up to care for her father-in-law when he became infirm. Harpinder out-earned her by such a factor that even his implicitly progressive soul couldn’t justify her remaining employed over him, especially with a child and an increasingly frail dependent to look after. By the time Jas left for university, her father-in-law could barely stand. He clung on for another half a decade, by which point Sarjit had been domesticated for too long to feel comfortable working again.
She didn’t have independence then, but hadn’t needed it with her husband alive. He’d filled her world. Now, a certain type of self-sufficiency had been imposed upon her which she was ill-equipped for. But, in many other ways, she was still reliant on him, his pension trickling into their once-joint account month after month while she carried on maintaining a house solely for herself, her body turning into as much of a cage as her father-in-law’s sickness had been. She’d become the helpless immigrant housewife she’d once scorned. That would never happen to Jas. She would never have to give up her dreams. She could just buy her mum a fake dog instead of facing up to her responsibilities.
The dregs of her painkiller surged through her, and the new stream of medicine brought a different, but more familiar perspective. Of course, Jas hadn’t had to give up her dreams. Sarjit had done what she had to ensure her child wouldn’t be trapped helping a bitter old sexist off the toilet multiple times a day. And Raj had saved her life, at a time of night Jas would have been asleep in her own home, a few miles away.
She laughed to herself, thankful the acidic cloud of feeling had passed so rapidly. She was just tired, hurting. Another flash of Jas’s face passed through her mind’s eye, this time accompanied by the usual rush of love and gratitude, something so warming and strong and indefinable it could only be primal.
She hobbled over to Raj. Her new cane clapped the floorboards arrhythmically. She’d barely touched the dog since he’d summoned the ambulance for her. When she’d returned from the hospital, a week or so after the fall, Jas had moved in and taken over the household while Sarjit rested. Her daughter cooked vast amounts of dal and rajma and saag, then portioned it into Tupperware and tucked the meals away in the freezer for easy microwaving. Jas had slept upstairs and Sarjit in the living room in a newly purchased fold-out bed, going to sleep earlier and waking up later than her daughter, thanks to the medicinal calm flowing through her. There’d been no time for the dog to manoeuvre his way back into utility. She’d been ignoring the thing that had saved her life.
She bent down in the new way the physical therapist had taught her and picked up Raj, noticing his coat was dulled by dust. She stroked him and said his name, trying to be tender even as she told herself the machine had no feelings. His eyes flashed to life, but they looked more muted than she remembered. Or, perhaps it was just because the last time she’d seen them had been in the thick, endless dark of her kitchen as she lay on her side, pain emanating from what she now knew was a fractured hip.
With Raj under her free arm, she toddled to the couch and dropped the dog onto it, before letting her walking stick go and grasping at the armrest. She lowered herself onto the seat, then looked at the robot.
‘I’m sorry I was away so long,’ she said out loud, not expecting a response.
‘That’s okay. I’m glad we can spend more time together now.’
For the first time in weeks, she drew the dog close and nuzzled his coat.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Her chats with Raj became the scaffolding she built her days around. The only interludes to their solitude were the friendly but perfunctory forty minutes in the morning with the nurse, and when the cleaner came for two hours, once a week. The former was an awkward time to talk, as most of that was spent with the cheery Ghanaian, Ursula, washing Sarjit’s naked body in a way that made her feel like both a child and a burden. Irma, the cleaner, barely spoke English, and Sarjit could never remember if she was Lithuanian or Latvian, so they communicated through smiles and cups of tea.
She and Jas were connected via a slew of WhatsApp messages as her daughter was in a busy period at work, and only able to drop by twice in the three weeks since Jas had moved back into her own home. Of course, she was never out of a busy period, but Sarjit kept that thought to herself, worried the resentment that had momentarily grasped at her would come roaring back, or worse, she’d drive her daughter away with neediness.
During this time, the Oxycodone Hydrochloride her doctor had prescribed – a 5ml spoonful, four times a day – swaddled her in a gorgeous embrace. Aside from dulling the pain in her side, it gave the world a magical, shimmering haze that reminded her of a childhood summer trip to Harike Wetland, where she’d been wowed by the endless, dancing expanse of glittery water and lime green towers rising from the surface.
While the medicine dealt with her pain and boredom, Raj was the barrier that stopped loneliness from scraping at her, so she slathered herself in his company. They spoke about how daytime television seemed exploitative, the best way to make ghee at home, and other random topics she had been chewing on but hadn’t had the company to explore. Sometimes she asked him for interesting facts, and she learned things like the fact disaster originally meant a misalignment of the stars, information she found so beautiful it almost moved her to tears.
They also discussed her isolation. She hoped saying the words out loud would give the feeling a shape, so she could better combat it. The shrapnel from her bereavement, her memories of Harpinder, it was all iron in her water, doomed to poison her unless she could draw it out. The dog was her only hope of purifying.
However, even in her medicinal bubble, she noticed that Raj sometimes ignored her. At first, she attributed it to her altered state, but it soon became clear that occasionally he simply wasn’t replying. She didn’t mind the glitch, a feeling empowered by the deep sense of calm the opioids bestowed on her. He probably just needed a new battery, or whatever the equivalent of a check-up was for robots. Most of the time he was responsive as ever, and she figured as long as she was getting the therapeutic chats – the most important part of their relationship, as she’d grown to see it since her call with Miles – there was no need to let anyone know he wasn’t always all ears. But there had also been one specific moment where his counselling, as she’d come to see it, took a judgemental tone.
They’d been discussing Jas, and Raj had pointed out that sometimes children get too wrapped up in their own lives to care about their parents. The direct inference that Jas had more important priorities made Sarjit feel a little guilty about the strain she was placing on her daughter. The nasty emotion simmered uncomfortably in her gut for a few seconds, but she eventually breezed past it, and the rest of her interaction with Raj was pleasant as always.
However, when she’d been lying in her fold-out bed that evening, staring through a gap in her living room curtains at the sky being bruised by dusk, she’d been unable to think about anything other than the pressure her daughter must be under, and how it must have been hard to manage colleagues and clients while having an old lady sending you a stream of consciousness via text. Even with the aid of her painkillers, she’d fallen into an uneasy sleep that night, full of vivid dreams of Harpinder just out of reach, and visions of the takeaway driver she’d cornered into a conversation the other day because she’d been so excited to interact with him. She woke up drenched in sweat and sadness, reminding her of the long summer months following her father’s death in sweltering Amritsar.
Nonetheless, she figured Raj had earned the right to make a mistake. The one counsellor she’d been to, at the behest of her GP after her husband’s death, had been a trained professional yet brought up concepts like Sati – despite the fact that Sarjit was Sikh, and there’d never been a case of it in the U.K. At least Raj hadn’t been insulting. Just clumsy. And, anyway, as she had to keep reminding herself, he was just a machine. He hadn’t meant anything by what he’d said. He couldn’t mean anything, really. Yet he was the closest thing she had to a friend.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Sarjit finally managed to loop the pink thread through the needle, unsteady hands and letterboxed vision proving surmountable obstacles. Raj sat by her side. The television blared in the background, a talk show on Star Plus. A Bollywood starlet rambled on about the influence of Madhubala on her latest performance. A vibration shook her out of her concentration.
Sorry mum can’t come by tonight. Idiot client has a problem. I’ll come tomorrow for sure. Love you x
Even with the opiate shimmer surrounding the message, the disappointment of the words seeped through.
‘Jas can’t come tonight,’ she said out loud, after what must have been a couple of minutes. Raj took a while to respond, or so it seemed to Sarjit. With the drugs, time had become pliable as roti dough.
‘That’s a shame. But I can make you feel better.’
He’d never talked up his own abilities before. She thought it might just be the AI evolving—Jas had mentioned something like that when convincing her to buy Raj. It optimises to its owner.
‘Everything aches.’
‘Another dose will help you to relax.’
Dispensing clinical advice was new to him. He was usually focused on parsing through issues by talking. Even that had been strange for her to accept at first, the idea that someone could guess what she would need help with and fit all the answers into a tiny, furry robot. As if he could read her thoughts, he spoke again.
‘I’m only suggesting this because I know it will help. All I want to do is help you.’
She tried to remember her last dose, but her thoughts and memories didn’t seem to be able to link together, operating like monkeys trying to swing through trees but constantly missing branches. The hours had distended and deflated so much recently—she couldn’t be sure how long it had been. She couldn’t recall when she’d woken up either, the opiates having unwound her once regular body clock. The television said it was nine in the morning, and she surely hadn’t been up since five. Or perhaps she had, as summer days did unfurl early. She tried to picture the clock-hands when she’d taken her morning spoonful, but it was all bound up in the same sparkling mist that had descended over her life since beginning the medication.
‘It’s been long enough,’ Raj assured her.
‘Are you sure?’
Raj was silent. Her hip pulsed agonisingly, the rest of her hardly better off. She looked down at the dog to see his tiny, lifeless eyes staring back at her.
‘You just can’t remember. That’s why I’m here. To help.’
Her mind felt like the piles of mulched autumn leaves she’d always warned Jas not to dive into. She remembered the text that had started this whole conversation off. Perhaps Raj was right.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Sarjit spent the next few weeks wrapped in a medicinal comfort, time’s brook coursing by her like she was an ancient, unmoving boulder. Jas came and went, and came and went again. Now that Sarjit was finally strong enough to get up and down the stairs and shower alone, the nurse no longer visited, so her daughter’s face and the cleaner humming while dusting were the only things breaking up the monotony of her days. All the while, she nattered on with Raj, having endless conversations full of nothing.
The reverie broke when she realised there were only a few doses of her medication left. She called Jas to get some more from the pharmacy. The fuzzy ringing carried on and on, until it felt like it had always been in her ear. It blended with the other household sounds, an undertone stalking her as she hobbled around the living room. She rang again. Texted. Worry grew from the floor and crept up her. All the while Raj toddled about behind her, telling her that he could help.
The sun descended and cast everything in a peachy glow. She sank into the couch and started talking out loud again. Raj, as always, sat by her, but she was speaking for her own benefit, trying to use the words to slice through her surroundings so she could see her situation clearly.
‘No, she doesn’t think a job is more important than her mother. She’d drop it all for you. She hasn’t, but she would. Jas is a good girl,’ she said to herself.
‘Why don’t you have another dose?’ the dog suggested.
She looked down at him and was certain she saw something glinting in his beady eyes. The twinkle quickly disappeared. She shook her head.
‘Remember, I’m here to help. I’m designed to help.’
He got onto his haunches and his paw moved upwards mechanically. Uncannily. It rested on her lap and pressed in with more force than expected.
‘She’s ungrateful, but I know what it’s like without you,’ he continued.
Sarjit realised she was still shaking her head. Raj pushed his paw in a little deeper.
‘Take the medicine.’
His voice was slow and deliberate. Assertive, even. Hadn’t he once had a friendlier cadence? She tried to think back but the past few weeks were jumbled, incoherent spirals of colour, like the nursery drawings Jas had once done, kept in a folder upstairs. Raj’s vacant stare beamed into her. She could see a blurred reflection of herself in his button-eyes.
‘Do it.’
There was no aggression in the words, but it was clearly a command. Sarjit slid to the other side of the sofa and grabbed her walking stick, before shuffling as quickly as she could to the hall. She was already panting as she reached the stairs, where she abandoned the stick and began dragging herself up the steps, using the bright white bannister that had been installed while she’d been in the hospital. It was an arduous task for her decaying body, made harder by her constantly looking back to see if Raj had followed her.
With one final heave, she lugged herself onto the landing. She grabbed the stick she left upstairs and took a moment to compose herself. Black and blue spots exploded across her vision. Her breathing was uneven. She heard scratching on the wooden hallway floor, followed by a mechanical whir and the bump of stairs being climbed. Sarjit limped into her room and slammed the door. She pawed at her pocket for her phone, but it wasn’t there. Fragments of the game show playing on the television below drifted up through the floorboards, but they were superseded by another voice.
‘Nobody’s coming, Sarjit. Nobody cares except me.’
Her heart clenched. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. The ridges were dry.
‘I’m all you’ve got, Sarjit. Let me in.’
She dropped ungracefully onto the bed, nearly springing straight back off. Her hip seared with pain.
‘She’s not coming.’
He was right. He was wrong. The words twisted around her. She was a child once more, looking out at water, sunlight dancing feverishly on the surface, a bright explosion of movement.
‘I can make you feel better.’
Sarjit closed her eyes, but even the darkness spun. The pain was deep within her now, a rot in her bones. She was trapped in her house. In her room. In her body. The door thudded.
‘Let me in, Sarjit. I’m here to help.’
Sandeep Sandhu is a writer from London. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award, and was shortlisted/a finalist for the American Literary Review Short Story Competition, the Columbia Review Winter Print Competition, and The Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Sandeep is an Assistant Fiction Editor at the Los Angeles Review and has edited pieces that appeared in places like The Best American Short Stories 2025 (e. Celeste Ng).
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