<DIV>A low-level, drunkard Indian diplomat in Africa finds himself mysteriously transferred to the Consulate in San Francisco, where everyone believes he is a great and undiscovered Urdu poet. An anthropological expedition searching for early human fossils in Ethiopia goes disastrously wrong and the leader begins to search madly for the very first sounds ever made by humans. When the wife of a retiring Consul discovers her pet python is dead, she decides to pay tribute to him in the way she knows best: by serving him to her dinner guests. A strange skull doscovered outside an orphanage in northern India leads to the creation of a cult around one of the charasmatic young residents and to acts of sudden violence. A wife knows the one thing her workaholic husband wants for his birthday: handcuffs, whips, sex toys of all sorts. He buys the drugs.<BR><BR>These and other stories are brought vividly to life in Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s startling and disturbing debut collection, <I>Good Indian Girls. </I><BR></DIV>