Full disclaimer: I work for the publisher of this book, but what a talented writer Gurnaik Johal is. At Serpent’s Tail we have just published Johal’s debut novel Saraswati, which has been highly anticipated due to We Move. Within the collection, Johal excels at telling intricate, delicate stories crossing the generations of a small corner of Northwest London, centring around the British-Punjabi communities in Southall and Northolt, near Heathrow airport.
Within “Arrival”, Johal finds a way of telling two different love stories through the single device of an abandoned car. The car belongs to Divya, and has been left stranded at the house of family friends Chetan and Aanshi. Chetan is expecting to pick up Divya from the airport, but she doesn’t arrive, and they are stuck with the car. We eventually discover that the no-show is because she has decided not to marry her fiancé, who arrives to pick up the car in a tense scene that opens and ends the story. In between, waiting for news, Chetan and Aanshi begin to use the car. They enjoy taking trips to IKEA, Windsor, and Brighton, their romance reilluminated by the novelty of the vehicle in their lives. It’s very sweet, and even when the car is collected, they are left in a sense of happiness, perhaps with a slight sense of cheekiness at getting caught. The story – which reminds me a bit of Mike Leigh’s films – is told so skilfully. It’s a terrific short story, and won the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize in 2022.
Available to read on the Galley Beggar website, here. Collected in We Move, Serpent’s Tail, 2022
A Personal Anthology 