Stray Mango Branches ... and other stories with Goan sap By Fatima M Noronha
Are you careful when you light candles in prayer? Who is most at risk when branches of a mango tree trespass into the neighbour's balcony? Were people less selfish when Padre Tio was young? Is it permissible to reveal the eighteenth ingredient in Tia Cassy's Christmas cake? Can the word 'donkey' be a term of endearment? Fatima M Noronha asks these and other questions in the stories here. 'Stray Mango Branches' is a plateful of slices and slivers of Goan life. The stories in the first party of this collection are meant to be fiction and those in the second part are meant to be memoir, but the author confesses she was not raised in a distinct genre. Family yarns take on a new twist in every telling, while who can stop real-life teacher Flavia, grave-digger Namdev and milkman Uday from wandering into fictional stories? Meet Goans in and away from Goa, meet people who are Irish or Nepali and Goan too. And if you meet a certain gorgeous acacia, his name is Shirish, he likes to be talked to.... -- Fatima M Noronha is a freelance writer and editor. She has published short stories and non-fiction for forty years, while serially pursuing a degree in literature, doctoral research in philosophy, teaching assignments, her fighter pilot Joe and, up to a point, their two daughters. Her work has featured in local, regional, national, overseas and online publications, and on the BBC. Born in Lisbon, she spent her youth in Goa where she has returned after twenty years at various military locations in India. 'Stray Mango Branches' is her first collection of vignettes and stories of life in Goa. Email: fatimamnoro...@gmail.com See cover: http://bit.ly/StrayMangoBranches. To be published in May 2013. Special pre-release price till May 31, 2013 via goa1...@gmail.com FN +91-832-2409490 or +91-9822122436 f...@goa-india.org Audio recordings (mostly from Goa): http://bit.ly/GoaRecordings Goa,1556 http://www.scribd.com/doc/76671049/Goa1556-Catalogue-Books-from-Goa