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      The Mango Man and Other Stories

      By

      Georgina Prasad

      Copyright 2013 Georgina Prasad,

      All rights reserved.

      Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com

       http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1583-3

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

      This is a collection of stories with simple themes and characters in exotic locations. A man on a mission to find a long-lost ancestor on another continent; a young couple in love and their stressful family situations; a woman during the partitioning of India amidst one of the greatest genocidal massacres in history; and a poor snack vendor who leaves an indelible impression on a boy. The stories encompass three generations and four countries on three continents. A delightful read, sometimes sad but always engaging.

      The Other Half

      The young man got off the train at the tiny village east of the Carpathian Mountains in the Ukraine. He was oblivious to the commotion around him of people trying to get on and off the train. Rather than being possessed with the natural curiosity of a visitor in a far-off land for the first time, his face wore a grim determination, a single-minded obsession with but one purpose. His right hand frequently kept patting his left breast pocket, as if to constantly assure himself that something was still safe inside.

      With what little he had picked up of his ancestral tongue, he asked about for directions to a certain individual's house. He did not have much trouble finding someone who knew whom he was looking for. A few excited waves of the hand pointing directions, and some animated conversation sent him off on a fast walk.

      About a half hour later, he found himself outside a very old, but still sturdy, whitewashed house. It looked like it could use a new roof, though. A bare electric bulb shined through a small window with a partly broken glass pane patched with clear plastic. He paused for what seemed an eternity, with pounding heart, before he clenched his fist and almost had to force it to rap on the ruggedly finished, solid wooden door.

      He heard a voice answer, and presently a girl in a peasant dress and in her late teens opened the door. "I'm looking for bubba Nadia" he said in his stumbling Ukrainian. The girl turned and pointed to a very old woman with a mane of platinum white hair, lying in a corner of the room. She looked like she was over a hundred years old. She raised her head from her pillow to look at the stranger who was calling, and then slowly sat up on her bed, never for one moment taking her eyes off him.

      "My name is Larry ... Larry Danyluk," he introduced himself in imperfect but understandable Ukrainian. "I come from the city of Winnipeg, in the province of Manitoba in Canada."

      He paused, waiting for some reaction from the old woman. There was none. She continued her steadfast gaze at him, but said nothing. A faint pang of discouragement arose within him, but he continued in his efforts to break the ice. He did not want to disclose the real purpose of his visit before he was sure of whom he was talking to.

      "I go to law school in Winnipeg. I'm on vacation now. I have, since my childhood, been fascinated with stories of the Ukraine, and I have been looking forward to visiting it someday. So here I am!"

      There was still nothing said, not even a change of expression in the old woman, but she never took her eyes off him. Larry cleared his throat self-consciously. He turned to the girl standing to one side of the room and asked, "Do you think bubba understands me?" She nodded her head.

      Larry continued. "My father's name is Victor, my mother's Anna. Father was born on a farm near a town called Minnedosa in Manitoba, Canada in 1930. Mother was also born and raised in the same place and went to the same school that father did. When they got married in 1952, they decided to move to the city of Winnipeg as there were more opportunities for better paying jobs and a better future for their children which they planned to have. The only experience he had until then was on the farm, so he was fortunate to find a job with a company that produced farm machinery, contraptions of which he knew something."

      Larry was beginning to feel a bit hot, either from his discomfiture of wondering whether he was simply making a fool of himself, or from the fire in the wood stove in the room, or both. His forehead was beaded with perspiration, and he badly wanted to take off his jacket, but he did not feel free to do so. He ran a sleeve across his forehead, again patted his left breast pocket and continued.

      "My paternal grandfather, Borysko, was born on a farm in Neepawa, Manitoba, which like Minnedosa was on the Canadian Pacific Railway route, about 30 kilometres to the east. As a young man, gido Borysko worked for a few years with the railway, and that was how, on one of his frequent trips through Minnedosa, he met my grandmother Valentina.

      "When they married they decided that Borysko's railroad job wasn't good for their family life as it kept him often, for weeks at a time, away from home. So they bought a small farm near Minnedosa from Valentina's uncle. They were reasonably successful as farmers, and over the years managed to enlarge their farm, a little at a time, buying a quarter section from one neighbour, a quarter from another, and so on."

      It was obvious that Larry had a liking for detail. He possessed a mind sharp enough for a successful legal career. He paused and turned to look at the girl. She was still standing, apparently transfixed by his narration of life in a far-off land. She suddenly broke out of her concentration with a shy smile and turned to go fetch a chair that stood near the fireplace from where came the very familiar aroma of simmering borscht. Placing it near Larry, she beckoned him to sit down, and then returned to standing at the side of the room, hands clasped together demurely. He could not help noticing what beautiful dark eyes she had, and the dimples on her cheeks when she smiled.

      He looked again at the old woman who continued to sit silently without moving a limb. But he sensed that she had warmed up to him, and he thought her face now betrayed a longing for him to go on.

      "My grandmother Valentina was the only child of my great-grandfather Pavlo Kuzyk and his wife Elena." He paused again, examining intently the deeply wrinkled face of the old woman for any glimmer of recognition of those names. If there was any, he could not see it. Though further disheartened, he continued.

      "As a small boy, I used to enjoy listening to stories that bubba Valentina used to tell me, of life on the Canadian prairie farm in the early 1900s. But, most of all, I was fascinated listening to her tell me stories told to her by her parents, of how they first came to Canada from the Ukraine as a newly-married couple in their early twenties, towards the end of the 1800s.

      "They had heard of how the Canadian government's Free Homestead Act allowed homesteaders to take possession of a quarter section of land for ten dollars. To get full ownership of the land they had to occupy and improve it by clearing it, building a house and farming the land. They had read a book about emigration to Canada written by a Dr Joseph Oleskew, a professor in Galicia, who in the 1890s, aware of the free land available in Canada, travelled across the prairies looking for possible settling areas for Ukrainian farmers. The young couple got together some money by selling almost everything they possessed, and some more from Elena's father, to pay for their train and boat tickets and have some left over to help start them on their new life in Canada.

      "They went by train to Hamburg where they boarded a steamship. After a miserable five-week voyage, braving rough seas, sea sickness, crowded decks and poor food, during which the only thing that kept their spirits from being totally broken was the hope of a new and better life, they landed in Halifax on the Atlantic coast of Canada.

      "After immigration formalities, they boarded a train that took them across the Atlantic Provinces, Quebec and Ontario and into Manitoba."

      Larry

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