Good Indian Girls: Stories
Page 19
I watched this scene for minutes as their bodies heaved up and down, in and out, tossed on some wave, as though they had caught a great fish and were riding its back, sticking their harpoons in, one after the other, trying to push into the kill, trying to cut its life off, but the fish wouldn’t die, it kept them on, it kept the chase on, racing through more and distant waters, pulling them along, raising them up, throwing them down, drowning them, rescuing them; they were losing home and ship, all hope of land, all hope of ever pulling in the flesh of this beast; their charts were gone, their instruments lost, the sky a black cave offering no stars for guidance, knowledge of the winds eradicated; their voices worked in snarling, urgent breaths and the knives and forks battled at the sides, trying to force any and all capitulation. But the fish pulled them along, out out out to the farthest reaches of the oceans where even the islands believed themselves to be whole worlds unto themselves, alone and without companion.
Acknowledgments
Several of these stories previously appeared in The Georgia Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Fence, The Barcelona Review, Press, Zyzzyva, Other Voices, The Missouri Review, Living in America, Hot Metal Bridge and The Alaska Quarterly Review.
© Paul Takeuchi
RANBIR SINGH SIDHU was born in London and grew up in California. He is a winner of the Pushcart Prize in Fiction, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and other awards. Trained as an archaeologist, he has lived and traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent.